Chargeback Pros cryptocurrency fraud investigation tips and tricks today? Cryptocurrency has become a popular digital asset used for several transactions in today’s digital world. To avoid fees and maintain anonymity, an increasing number of people are using cryptocurrency to purchase products and services and conduct payment transactions. Not only that, but investors also hold different digital currencies as investments to gain more profit. For these reasons, cryptocurrency has also caught the attention of many scammers in the digital world. Primarily, a crypto scam refers to an illegal scheme that involves stealing your digital assets through phishing, blackmail, Ponzi schemes, and fake exchanges, among others. Discover even more information on crypto fraud recovery services.
In the event that your company does experience a cyberattack, waste no time responding. Quarantine the equipment that might have been infected, and clean it out. Notify business partners and contacts who might have been indirectly affected by the attack. Figure out if any of your customers’ payment information has been compromised. If you don’t have IT staff, you should definitely hire a professional to analyze the problem and resecure your system. You also need to report the incident immediately to local authorities, the Internet Crime Complaint Center and possibly the FBI. You might want to just forge ahead and put the whole ordeal behind you, but reporting the crime will protect you and other businesses from further attacks. It’ll help law enforcement gain clues about the perpetrators and how they operate. They might not be brought to justice immediately — or ever — but it’s an important step.
Avoidance maneuver: Make sure you’re not set up to automatically connect to nonpreferred networks. (For PCs, go to the Network and Sharing Center in the Control Panel. Click on the link for the Wi-Fi network you’re currently using. A box with a “General” tab should pop up. Click “Wireless Properties.” Then, uncheck the box next to “Connect automatically when this network is in range,” and click OK to enable. For Macs, click on the Wifi button in the upper right, click “Open Network Preferences,” and check “Ask to join new networks.”) Before traveling, buy a $20 Visa or MasterCard gift card to purchase airport Wi-Fi access (enough for two days) so you won’t broadcast your credit or debit card information. Or set up an advance account with providers at airports you’ll be visiting. And don’t do any banking or Internet shopping from public hot spots unless you’re certain the network is secure. (Look for https in the URL, or check the lower right-hand corner of your browser for a small padlock icon.) Finally, always be on the lookout for these red flags someone is spying on your computer, whether you’re in public or not.
You’ve been hired…and scammed. Often fake check scams and run in tandem with job-search scams. You’ll hear that you’ve been “hired” and instructed to deposit a check in your bank account, then withdraw most of the money and wire it to someone else. Victims are told to keep several hundred dollars of the money as payment. When the checks are later discovered to be phony, the banks reverse the deposit and the victims are left liable for the money withdrawn, usually several thousand dollars. Even if you’re not asked to forward on part of the funds, unexpected checks can still be scams. For example, you might be liable for the amount of the counterfeit check, your endorsement might give your account information to fraudsters, or you could receive follow-up attempts to phish for personal financial information — or some combination.
Some examples of recent attacks include a $650,000 phishing scam of a MetaMask wallet user targeted by a hacker posing as an Apple employee. MetaMask’s response, which was criticized at the time by community members, was to issue a warning to users whose data were susceptible to hackers because their iCloud backups include their password-encrypted MetaMask vault. Earlier this week, a Moonbirds NFT holder lost 29 of his Ethereum-based Moonbirds, worth around $1.5 million at the time, after signing a bad transaction on a fake trading site he reached by clicking a malicious link shared by a scammer. The victim was a member of the Proof Collective, a private group of 1,000 dedicated NFT (non-fungible token) collectors and artists. Although the scammer was identified, only an FBI report was filed.