We Used To Call It Grifting
Posted on 20th April 2020 at 17:21
We Used To Call It Grifting
The art of Grifting was despite its illegalities, performed by very skilled confidence tricksters, who could spend an awful amount of time learning about their mark to be able to use that information against them to steal from them.
This process was very time consuming and many people could be required to make the marks believe the con and ultimately create a successful & profitable sting.
Let’s fast forward
In today’s ultimately connected world where we are able to share at the touch of a keyboard or swipe on a screen, the flow of personal information is in a very steady stream which is very easy to intercept, every time: -
We post a picture.
Make a comment.
Enter a competition.
Provide answers in a poll.
Sign up for a free piece of software.
Hold an insecure video conference.
Create an account to purchase a product.
For each of these examples we are giving away our Personal Identifiable Information (PII), and in doing so we have to trust that our information is being shared with a reliable source who will protect our information, keep it secure and stop unexpected disclosure.
Sadly, in many cases our information is being harvested by dubious sources to steal from us and they are using their skill to manipulate us into willingly: -
Enter their competition.
Click on their email.
Sign up for their service
Visit their website
Compromise the software
Etc
Today we still have grifting and unfortunately Cyber Criminals have a much easier time and require much less effort to make us their mark and steal from us.
Today we don’t call it Grifting we call it Social Engineering and many of us fall for their ingenious scams & happily gift wrap our PII.
Our Advice
To avoid becoming a victim: -
Be very careful what you share,
Be very careful where you share.
Most importantly if it seems too good to be true, it probably is and our greatest recommendation
When In Doubt Do Nowt
Tagged as: Avoid Cyber Criminals, Grifting, Home Working, Online Fraud, Online Swindling, Scam, Social Engineering, Social Safety
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