Technology Advisor Blog

The Ekaru team does not slow down in the summertime, we continue by providing local businesses with our specialized skills in cybersecurity to ensure your business has the best tools and security practices in place to protect your team and its assets. We mentioned in a previous blog post that cyber criminals will target travelers when they are away from their desks, especially in the quieter months for work and PTO.
To target travelers with social engineering, scammers will try anything to cause a strong emotional reaction that leads you to making a quick, flustered decision.
How are they doing this now and in the summer, you may ask; cyber criminals are creating hyper realistic sophisticated scams through targeted social media ads and email promotions with too good to be true vacation prices. The goal for them is to create a sense of escapism, love the idea of a trip that you cannot give up on, and all at a fair price that makes you want to impulsively take your credit card and proceed, without taking a moment to be skeptical.
In these scenarios, how you react may either omit safety or have you flustered for falling for a scam. Either way, we are here to help and provide you with awareness, you, your team, friends and family will appreciate.

Scams: Rose Colored Glasses For Short Term Happiness, Immediate Consequences

Cyber criminals find ways to infiltrate your devices from free Wi-Fi, airport charging stations, and logging into accounts in hotel rooms. Cyber criminals are always finding ways to phish for your attention.
Before we dive further, lets set up a scenario that can happen to you, me or anyone else you may know if you’re not aware of a cyber criminals social engineering manipulation attempts.

Picture this: You have some PTO from your job that has been accumulating and want to reward yourself for all your hard work with a nice vacation and a mental recharge (as you should). On your social media, you vocalize how you’re looking forward to a vacation, or maybe you’re already on vacation and showcasing your amazing trip. Within days, your social media feed begins to show you ads of these beautiful ‘locations’ with affordable pricing and the flights appear to also be cheap there too. You’re ecstatic and want to dive further into this offer. Cybercriminals saw your social media habits and began to mirror what you’re looking for, while they look for your personal information promptly. Or if you’re already away, they know now from your posting habits that your home is now vacant in which they can phish for your attention or worse.
When it comes to discussing your trip whether it’s through pictures or words on social media, it is best to keep that information for after you return back home for safety purposes.

When it comes to researching trips after receiving promotional social media ads or emails, its important to consider:

-Do through research on location and property outside of the social media ads. Make sure the location is legit and can be consistently seen through other booking platforms.
-Know that listings will display multiple recent photos of location along with its accommodations. If something appears to be off from the visuals, go with your gut feeling.
-If the payment transaction from the listing makes you pay Venmo or Cashapp, consider that the payment methods are a sign for you to take a closer look in the legitimacy of the listing.

Same to your work email, you should only respond to folks when you recognize the sender, if its someone you don’t know ignore them and report. Same with your personal information, only accept secure payment methods and verify funds before proceeding.

Types of Summer Scams You May Come Across This Season

-Travel Giveaway scams: You cannot win a contest that you did not know about or you never entered! In a lot of cases if it sounds too good to be true it likely is.

-Fake Vacation Home Rental Listings: Sometimes these can be listings that do not exist on other verified websites.

Scams Actively Occurring On Trip

Some cases, you made all the right steps to ensure you and your family’s vacation is smooth sailing, but forthe extracurricular activities you must do some additional research and watch out for the red flags.
For example, if you’re on an island getaway, summer rental equipment like jet skis, boats/kayaks, additional excursions should be on your bucket list. However, scammers usually pretend to be from legitimate shops in an area that is unfamiliar to you. This allows them the advantage to trick you into sharing your personal information such as your phone number and credit card information. The scammers will use social engineering by creating a sense of urgency that you must pay for your rental equipment as soon as possible and to ‘secure’ your spot to rent the equipment. This is their way of isolating you and if you cannot think well on the spot, they will weaponize that to rush your decision. If you relax, stop and think, double check the sender and your gut feeling say otherwise, do what you can to protect yourself.
If you end up falling for the cybercriminal’s phishing attempt in this case, you lose your funds, your personal information, and the legitimate seller loses the equipment.

Fell For Scam? Here's What to Do

Those that find themselves falling for a vacation scam before and or actively on your trip, consider the following:

-Contact your bank immediately, the quicker you freeze/shut down your accounts, the less the scammers will be able to weaponize your funds and information.
-Retrieve all paper trail or any additional documentation from your interactions with the scammer. Save screenshots of rental listings, text messages, emails, and any confirmations of payments with scammer.
-REPORT!!! To the 3 major credit bureaus. Leave a strong negative review on the scam listing to help others not fall for the same sophisticated scams.

Conclusion

The world we live in today, scammers are not going anywhere anytime soon. Their tactics will only get increasingly sophisticated. It is our responsibility to properly react to these scenarios and not give them any type of power or control over us. We must bring them to light from the shadows to expose their tactics.
Our Ekaru team, with its specialized cybersecurity programs, can help your business ensure they are on top of all new and old ways cyber criminals can reach you. We provide users and clients with cybersecurity training, monitoring of email accounts for any suspicious activity before and after your trip to ensure operations are running smoothly both in the office and personal devices.
You deserve to have a break and to come back from vacation feeling refreshed instead of flustered, stressed over falling for a scam during a special time. We are all human; we have opportunities to learn from mistakes, and we use those to teach others for awareness and prevention.

Interested in how Ekaru can help enhance your businesses security needs, plus have smoother operations year round? Give us a call today at 978-692-4200 or email us with questions at info@ekaru.com and we will get back to you as soon as possible!
Even if you have some questions or want to chat, we are here and happy to help!