I had a political figure call me up one day last year and tell me they were concerned about their browsing history as they got an email saying that if they did not pay $2,000 dollars it would all be exposed. I assured that person it was a scam, and hackers really don’t know your browsing history.
They are just assuming you would not want it revealed and are preying on that fact. Hackers conduct this and similar kinds of online extortion every day.
In another attempted hacking incident, we had a person call the office the other day asking for help with attaching pictures to an email. We get all sorts of odd tech requests at our firm but this was an immediate red flag.
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The person said she got an email from her boss (hackers impersonating the boss) asking for gift cards for staff and she went out and bought them. Next the boss sent her another email to scratch off the back of the cards and send them the codes. Had she done so, they would have been another victim of this common gift-card scheme.
Luckily by calling us asking for help attaching pics we were able to advise her she was about to be scammed and to stop communicating with the hackers.
Defend against hackers
How about the threat where you receive an email that has a drop box attachment claiming to be full of resumes (it really contains ransomware), or another email asking you to wire money somewhere referencing a…
