Security, Scams, and Ripoffs. Edition 1. Skype Phishing.

Oh, Dear Reader, we know YOU are far too wise, albeit, still short of tooth, and sagacious to fall pray to such foolery. We therefore provide, for your entertainment as well as edification, the following, with no lack of brevity :)

I don't know about you, but in our business, we use Skype for a ton of communication - daily phone calls, click-to-call convenience, call-from CRM, video call interviews (a tremendous time and resource saver).  It's safe to say, we have a lot of skype exposure.
Security rule of thumb: The thieves go to where the traffic and MONEY is.  It used to be that on-line porn and free sex movie websites were the dangerous neighborhoods online, but my how that has changed. Now thieves target the busy, business streets of ether.
So here we have what looks like a legit contact request from someone in banking.  Were I too busy to read the long, boring intro, I might have just accepted. But I LIKE to read long, boring..... um, you get that, right?
Contact request. Looks like a banker. I investigate.
Hmmm.  Seems like a scam. $8,000,000USD in some bank.  Who IS this person? A Nigerian Prince?

But, it is a juicy amount of money.  Of course, I won't contact the guy. That would be foolish :)  But maybe, I would be tempted to check out the story.  It's gossip worthy.

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The message raises BIG RED FLAGS.  That news link looks LEGIT though.  Right?

     Now consider this. Thieves are some of the most quick to adapt in any culture.  They think about stealing 24x7.

   So before any one goes clicking any link in this scam, think of this.  The OBJECT is NOT to get you to reply back and engage with this guy.  It's OBVIOUSLY a rip off.

    The object of this trick is to get your gossip on, and click the seemingly SAFE news link.  News sites are some of the most dangerous, mal-ware infested places on the internet., so even if the link were legit, it would be risky.  THIS link looks like it goes to some bbc news; however, it goes somewhere else (we have deleted and removed the link for safety, and the lawyers made us).

     These days, one merely has to click a link to activate a very fast acting script (that the click has now given permission to run), to activate an HTML5 code that will instantly read, copy and transmit certain targeted spots on your machine - like password storage, picture files.. whatever.  We don't want anything leaving our machine without permission, especially those photos from last year's Christmas Party :$

   Sweet dreams everyone and, please be safe out there.

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