Fraud Awareness Week 2015 - Tips
November 17, 2015 | Events
Fraudsters use all kinds of clever tricks to steal from businesses. By taking sensible precautions, you can avoid becoming a victim.
Almost $800,000 was lost from 35 small businesses that were the victims of cybercrime in 2014, according to NetSafe. That’s an average of $22,521 for each victim.
Small businesses have reported 309 incidents so far this year, compared with 106 during the same period of 2014.
2015 biggest scam threats to small businesses
- Email scams: Hackers intercept business’ emails, and then send false invoices to clients asking for payment to be made to an alternative bank account.
- Ransomware: Infection of a small business’s computer system. Hackers will encrypt the victim’s system and make computer files inaccessible. Hackers will often hold a business’s files hostage until a Bitcoin ransom is received in exchange for poor or non-existent backups.
- Spear phishing: Targeted emails that requests payment or bank transfer of company funds to offshore accounts. This can involve the creation of almost duplicate domain names to increase the chance of success. It can also involve mimicking a small business email to get their customers to make payments to hackers.
- Invoice fraud: The sending of fake or dubious invoices to trick companies into renewing intellectual property registrations or enter online directories. The most significant this year has been the Corporate Portal scam – read the Commerce Commission’s warning.
- Funding scams: The NZ Funding Grants website has tricked many small firms into paying fees to find grants that are non-existent. New Zealand Trade and Enterprise and the Commerce Commission have warned the public about this company.
Top 4 tips to prevent being caught out by scammers
By taking sensible precautions you and your business can avoid becoming victims.
1. Stop
Don’t respond if you have any doubts that the company or product is fake.
Don’t open suspicious or unsolicited emails or letters.
Don’t click on any links in a spam email or open any files attached to them.
Never reply to a spam email or letter.
If you receive a call with an offer that sounds too good to be true, it probably is – so hang up.
Call your bank immediately if you have sent your credit card details or paid money to a suspicious trader.
2. Check it out
Don’t assume a company is based in New Zealand just because the website address ends with .co.nz or .nz. Check to see if a company is registered in New Zealand on the Companies Office website.
Check that payment pages look secure. Look for a padlock symbol and make sure the website address begins with “https” (the “s” stands for secure).
3. Find out more
Type the company’s name into a search engine, followed by the word “scam”. If the company is fake, you may uncover stories from people who’ve been caught out by the same scam.
Always check out a trader’s contact details, especially if it’s just a mobile number or an email. Ring a landline if they provide one - and if you can’t get through or it goes to an overseas call centre, it may be a scam.
Read more advice about scams.
4. Report
Report a scam and warn your friends and trading partners. Advice on how to report an incident is available on The Orb website and on the Internal Affairs website.
Read Business.govt’s advice on protecting your systems and processes from cyber attacks.
- Article originally on consumeraffairs.govt.nz.
