vishing

Protecting yourself from vishing attacks

You might have heard about online "phishing" scams designed to steal money from unsuspecting Web users, but now criminals are using another type of scam called "vishing" to commit the same crimes.

Last week, the Federal Trade Commission filed lawsuits against two telemarketing firms in Florida and a company claiming to sell extended automobile warranties for violating the Do Not Call registry and fraud for selling bogus warranties for between $2,000 and $3,000 a pop. Since 2007, the companies supposedly made 1 billion calls and generated more than $10 billion.

These companies likely used … Read more

An introduction to vishing

This introduction to vishing is offered in the hope that being aware of it makes you less likely to fall for a vishing based scam.

Vishing is short for voice phishing. Voice refers to the fact that the scam is perpetrated over the phone. Phishing is a scam designed to "criminally and fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity..." according to Wikipedia.

As people get less trusting (deservedly so) of email, the bad guys hope victims put more faith in phone numbers.

A recent article by Brian … Read more