Fraud prevention is very important to
big or even smaller businesses. Self-storage industry is beginning
to be affected by cybercrime and it is becoming a big problem. This can be
prevented through effective training and education to make owners and managers
aware of the developing problem. Same methods that were already adapted by
cybercriminals to target other industries and some of the same methods used to
defraud businesses before digital age can be used against our industry.
Small- to medium-sized
businesses are in more risk than ever unlike before that only the most
high-profile cybercrime cases involves child victimization or Russian spies.
Although large corporations have the most up to date protection of their
systems they always tune it up because they still have been fighting online
fraud for many years. This is why smaller outfits (family-owned self-storage
facilities or even smaller chain operations) should be vigilant to what is
happening in the cyber underworld as well.
Larger companies stronger
defense made cybercriminals turn to smaller businesses as their victims. This
smaller outfits only have a small IT staff or sometimes non at all, making them
an easier target. What they should be doing is to start teaching themselves of
the latest scams and methods of today’s digital thieves.
Criminal
Minds and Methods. Cyber thieves use many various techniques to trick their
victims. Cyber criminals have the reputation that they large affect large bank
because “that’s where the money is.”
What self-storage owners and managers should know is that these cyber criminals
are now also targeting their industry. Now also seen on self-storage industry
is the some same methods used to target the broader real estate industry. Even
if there are few self-storage attacks that were known to public, in general
small organizations is now cyber thieves target preys.
Recently, another example of
cybercrime in real estate industry was through email messages with the goal to
recruit money mules. Money mules are simply the money launderers, their work is
to transfer the money collected from the Internet scams from the victim to the
criminal. These people most of the time are unaware of the crime they committed
because they believe what they did was just work from home opportunity.
“An international real
property agency with wide background in reselling, exchanging, buying out and
legal counseling assistance all over the USA and Canada.” This is a Spam
message that has been distributed recently, offers a part-time real estate
agent position. This is an example of a illegitimate offer rather what it do
instead is it not only involves international, organized crime, it denigrates
and erodes the integrity of true real estate professionals.
This one is another real
estate-specific scam, it involves rental properties posted online. Cyber
criminals can collect every payment to the property they do not own simply by
copying the digital information from your online listing to create their own
listing. This is actually a long time scheme and now the convenience and
ubiquity of the Internet make it easier for cons to perpetrate these crimes.
People who find it harder and
harder to make ends meet have been lured into secret shopper jobs, this happens
during the recent recession. Most of these are scams but there are also
legitimate offers on the website for the Mystery Shopping Providers Association.
In self-storage industry an example of this scam involves a re-shipping scam
where you may be persuaded over email to receive goods at your facility and
later ship them out to another address. They are taking advantage of your
innocence so you can commit a crime without you knowing so try to avoid strange
offers like the latter.
Remember that cyber criminals
are best at tricks, they prey on your sympathies and fears and you may not know
it until you literally misplaced your confidence in someone.
They also used sense of
urgency to lure you into becoming their prey. They will make you feel that you
have to respond quickly to the queries in order to get the business. Any
transactions that make you decide urgent more often than not leads to disaster,
in any decision you make always remember to slow down, take it easy and rethink
of it several times before deciding and remember, cyber criminals take
advantage of our impulsiveness.
Phishing and Malicious Spam.
Maybe the most famous, earliest and the most widespread from of scam over the
Internet was phishing of online banking credentials. the cyber criminal will
send you an authentic-looking emails, messages or link that warns you that
something went wrong to your account and you need to confirm your information
details by clicking on the link provided and logging on their account would
mean they already have your details without you realizing it. As a result, all
your authentication credentials were immediately emailed to a criminal who used
them to transfer all of the money out of the account. Self-storage isn’t spared
on this scam. Managers and their website administrators must be alert to
phishing scams so they do not fall prey to such Internet fraud.
RE/MAX brand was spoofed by
email account credential phishing and was used as scam for real estate
industry. Once homebuyers logged in their email accounts to the look-a-like
page that offers to give them access to exclusive listings but the thing is
RE/MAX is not linked to your email provider, and the victims had their email
accounts compromised.
It doesn’t matter how famous
phishing is, scam watch is very important, because today’s spam messages are
even more authentic looking and more malicious, it is harder to determine the
authenticity. It isn’t just that but now you did not have to click a link from
the email you received rather just by visiting a drive-by malware site where
they do not even need to log in or agree to download anything in order to be
infected with a banking Trojan or other malicious software. Immediately after
being infected, your vital and secret authentication credentials for banking
and other online transactions will be stolen, and you wil have no control over
your machine because it is now being controlled by unseen forces and included in
a global botnet that perpetuates more cybercrime.
The Blackhole Exploit Kit,
since this criminal toolkit was invented phishing method has become more common
over the past two years. For only $50 per day or $1,500 per year scammers can
lease this software kit.
Fraudsters can lease this
software kit for. The spammers who initiate the infection process have created
email messages that spoof over 50 well-known brands and do not contain spelling
errors or other mistakes to tip off a suspecting reader. The chart below
describes how the Blackhole Exploit Kit is used to infect you with malware in a
drive-by attack. Large organization technology departments are finding more
ways for scam watch and fraud prevention so that they can protect their
employees and systems and for the rest of us, scam watch is our own
responsibility. We must learn to be wary of links in unsolicited email
messages. Instead of clicking on the links provided, navigate to the content by
using your browser to go to the website you trust for that company. If email
account is spamming or Facebook or Twitter account is showing messages that you
did not post, the best thing you do is change your passwords.
Tips for Using Social Media While Protecting Your Online Presence. Self-storage uses social media accounts to promote
their products. And to be able to protect those accounts from invasion and
manipulation, they should take additional steps.
• If you have a professional
Internet presence, then maintain those accounts in a professional way and maintain
your personal social networking profiles separately.
• Do not fall for scam artists
who promise to deliver hundreds of “Likes” of your page for a small fee.
• Safeguard your passwords
carefully by using HTTPS and strong passwords and by using different passwords
for every site. You can find free software for password management to help you
with this.
Customer Data. “The most
attractive ‘loot’ for today’s thieves are customer data—at least for the
cyber-criminals.” This is from the article on selfstorage.com on Oct. 12, 2012,
“Cyber-crime overshadows property theft” by Mark Lusky. This loot can be
plundered from your payment system such as credit card machine or systems
compromised. This can also affect your email account such as accessed after
login credentials have been phished or obtained with malicious software, or
your business computer that has been infected.
Self-storage stores customers’
data in a digital format, PII or personal identifying information, if not well
taken cared of can be used to steal your customer’s identity. Scam watch should
be well thought of or it will create devastating fines, minimum fine for a data
breach can be $10,000 per customer.Protection through Awareness. Scam watch is
very easy in fact; a good start for this action is to self-study and to email
notifications from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (www.ic3.gov).
This action will help you get informed, cyber criminals always has new
technology to trick on you, so it is always good to get knowledgeable to
emerging cyber threats that could affect your business.Some may find this
unnecessary but this is as important as any fraud prevention. Remember that all
software you use should also be kept current, including your operating system
(Windows or Mac OS), your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, etc.),
and other programs such as Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash. And disable Java in
your browser’s plug-ins section as unlatched Java contains the most
successfully-exploited vulnerabilities. It is very essential to have anti-virus
and anti-malware protection on all of your computers and to look into guard for
your mobile devices such as smart phones.
Help
From Authorities. Activities highlighted are Federal crimes and should be
reported as such this is according to the most cybercrime offenses are covered
by Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 1030: Fraud and related activity
in connection with computers. The U.S. Department of Justice website sustains
its Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section with contacts for
reporting incidents to local, state or Federal law enforcement agencies.As the
larger banks and institutions are becoming more conscious to cyber attacks of
all kinds, self-storage industry and real estate in general in now more
appealing to cyber criminals. But since they are becoming a little bit more
conscious too and developing ways of scam prevention, cyber criminals are not
targeting small businesses that tend to have less wary employees and smaller
computer staffs. And smaller staffs should step up and find ways to defend
themselves against threat of cybercrime.
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