IRS Phone Scammers Shift Tactics
The variety of IRS tax scams is continuing to increase, and the agency is now telling consumers to be wary of a recent shift in scammers’ tactics regarding tax refund schemes. The latest version involves scammers calling consumers to “verify” details of their tax returns and harvesting valuable personal information. Most of these schemes involve […]
On the Wire Podcast: Roger Anderson
Roger Anderson is a self-proclaimed phone geek, the kind of guy who loves getting into the guts of a telco network and figuring out how it works. So when he decided that he’d had enough calls from telemarketers and robocallers, he didn’t cancel his landline, he built the Jolly Roger Telephone Company, a bot that […]
IRS Warns of 400% Jump in Tax Scams
The IRS is warning consumers about a huge spike in the volume of phishing emails related to tax return fraud, something that has become an annual occurrence. The warning comes a couple weeks after the agency issued a similar warning about phone fraud scams related to the IRS. Numbers compiled by the agency show that […]
Owning VOIP Phones With Zero Clicks
Researchers have uncovered a simple method for compromising some common VOIP phones, enabling them to listen to victims’ calls covertly or use the phones to make expensive or fraudulent calls. The attack takes advantage of the fact that the affected phones don’t have any authentication set up by default, but do have a vulnerability that […]
UK Launches Task Force to Address Fraud
Phone fraud, vishing, and other forms of financial fraud have emerged as serious threats to many financial institutions and their customers. Banks and government agencies have begun forming alliances to help address the issue, and the latest is a new task force in the U.K., comprising banks, law enforcement, and government agencies, that will help […]
Driving Robocallers Crazy With the Jolly Roger Bot
Robocalls are among the more annoying modern inventions, and consumers and businesses have tried just about every strategy for defeating them over the years, with little success. But one man has come up with a bot of his own that sends robocallers into a maddening hall of mirrors designed to frustrate them into surrender. The bot […]
FDIC Releases Cybersecurity Framework for Banks
The FDIC has released a cybersecurity framework for banks that describes a long list of threats to financial institutions and includes recommendations for how they can defend against those threats. The framework doesn’t contain any surprises or novel threats, but provides a broad outline of the problems banks and other financial institutions face, such as […]
New Data Shows Google Listing Phone Scam On the Rise
Like malware authors, phone scammers change their tactics and lures often, but for the most part, they play the hits. And the number one song so far this year has been the Google/Yahoo/Bing listing scam that accounted for 22 percent of robocalls in January. The new data from Pindrop Labs shows that scammers are using this […]
Feds Indict More Than 50 in Jury Duty Phone Fraud Scam
Federal officials have indicted more than 50 people, including 15 former prison officials and 19 former inmates, in a long-running vishing and phone fraud scheme that was run through a Georgia prison. Using cell phones smuggled into Autry State Prison by guards, the inmates would call victims, mostly in the Atlanta metro area, and inform them […]