We have Black Friday and Cyber Monday behind us. After losing ground to online competitors, brick-and-mortar retailers have struck back with incredible online deals. Wal-Mart said Thanksgiving was its second biggest day ever for online sales and Target's online buying was up 40% over last year.
This is the time of year that people buy new smartphones, TVs and new game consoles because they are able to get killer deals and they are dying to get their hands on these new goodies.
What you may not know is that similar to a magazine's editorial calendar, hackers have a "scam calendar" which focuses on events exactly like this. They have them planned and ready to roll starting TODAY for the rest of the month.
These malware campaigns do not discriminate between the home and the office, and use social engineering to trick users. A Billion of these criminal emails are sent each day. So, I strongly recommend you send this to your users today. Feel free to edit any way you like:
"Scammers are preying on people that have just made a lot of online purchases on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There are several scam campaigns being sent right now.
1) Be on the lookout for "Shipping Problem" emails from from FedEx, UPS or the US Mail, where the email claims they tried to deliver a package from (for instance Apple Computer) but could not deliver due to an
incomplete address. "Please click on the link to correct the address and you will get your package." If you do, your computer is likely to get infected with malware. Warn everyone in the family, especially teenagers.
2) Watch out for alerts via a TEXT to your smartphone that "confirm delivery" from FedEx, UPS or the US Mail, and then asks you for some personal information. Don't enter anything. Think Before You Click!
3) And to reiterate a warning we sent out a few weeks ago, there is a fake refund scam going on that could come from a big retailer. It claims there was a "wrong transaction" and wants you to "click for refund" but instead, your device may be infected with ransomware.
Especially in these times, Think Before You Click!"
PS: If you are a KnowBe4 customer, this would be a good time to send the "Package Could Not Be Delivered" template from the Online Services section to keep your users on their toes. If you aren't a customer yet, you can create a free account and send a simulated phishing test to 100 of your users and see what the Phish-prone percentage of your organization is. Create your (did I say free?) account now:
