Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

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Tech scams are continuing to grow in scale and damage. According to CBS News, Americans have reported over $2.7 billion in losses to tech scams from social media alone. Further losses are being accrued through other sources, too, of course; but with that figure coming from one source, alone, the scale of the problem is laid out quite clearly. As more of the nation moves to a digital-first footing, these attacks are only likely to increase in volume, and scale, too.

When shopping online, you want to feel 100% sure that the service you are handing over your details is safe and secure. One of the most popular payment methods for online shopaholics is PayPal. However, is PayPal safe, and how secure is it when checking out online? Throughout this article, we will discover 15 of the most common PayPal scams and online fraud scams to watch out for and how to avoid them.

Midstride in this year’s holiday shopping, it’s important to realize just how many websites exist that impersonate legitimate online retailers. More importantly, your users need to know how to spot these types of attacks before falling victim.

Researchers at Bitdefender warn that scammers are tricking victims with fake remote job opportunities. In this case, the scammers tell victims that they’ll get paid for liking YouTube videos. Notably, the scammers send the victims a small amount of money (around six dollars) to gain their trust. After this, the victim is invited to a Telegram channel, where the scammer offers to give them much higher-paying tasks if they pay an entry fee of between $21 and $1,083.

Roughly 20 percent of all retail sales occur online. This statistic may sound lukewarm now, but e-commerce is rapidly becoming the lion’s share of global transactions. However, the model’s incredible growth also provides criminals ample opportunity to steal from online businesses. The absence of a physical location removes much of the criminal’s risk, and new strategies constantly pop up. A robust fraud prevention strategy should cover the majority of business operations.

Embezzlement is an internal crime that someone commits against their organization. The perpetrator's inside knowledge helps them avoid detection and clean up the evidence. It's a problem that can spiral out of control and cause massive damage to an organization's public face. Identifying the warning signs of embezzlement and acting quickly is essential to preventing the worst-case scenario.

Urging taxpayers and tax professionals to be vigilant, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) provides some simple guidance on how to spot new scams aimed at being able to file fake tax returns. Apparently, there are actually three certainties in life: death, taxes and scams revolving around taxes. This according to the IRS, as part of their annual Security Summit. As with any major event that has the attention of millions of people simultaneously, tax season is no exception.

Taking traditional “delayed package” scams up a notch, new phishing and smishing attack campaigns are leveraging freemium DNS services to avoid detection by security solutions. In some ways, the old adage “there’s nothing new under the sun” seems to be holding up. Take the latest USPS impersonation scam identified by domain monitoring vendor Bolster. It follows many of the same steps and uses similar tactics as any of the USPS scams I’ve covered before.

Security analysts at identity vendor Sumsub are seeing a massive rise in the use of deepfake fraud in their Identity Fraud Report 2023. And one country may be to blame. While Sumsub’s focus is more around all forms of identity security, it's witnessing a significant increase in deepfakes, as deepfakes are a form of identity fraud. According to Sumsub, the top three fraud trends identified were: The approximate overall growth rate worldwide for the use of deepfakes is 10x.