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During a recent visit from my beloved mother-in-law, she received a text message on her phone*.
As every message is vitally important, she stopped mid-conversation to check it.
It took her about 6 seconds** to put the phone back down and tell me it was ‘just another one of those bloody scams that you keep telling me about’.
A picture of ‘one of those bloody scams’ is below.
(If you are unable to see the picture above, it shows an SMS text message that says ‘Hi Mum i lost my phone. Can you save this number [and a number is given] and send me a message on WhatsApp. Thank you’).
When I asked her how she knew it was a scam, she mentioned two things:
- If it was real, her daughter would have put her name in the message.
- If it was real, her daughter would have just phoned her to tell her.
So what?
Well, firstly, it’s good to know someone listens to me now and again!***
And also…
These messages are becoming increasingly common, as criminals know we are less suspicious of phone messages than email messages.
- This particular scam is probably trying to fool the recipient into transferring money to the criminal.
- But a similar approach could also be used to fool one of your staff members into transferring company funds.
As I said before…
If you’re not showing your staff how to be more secure in their personal lives, don’t be surprised if they aren’t more secure in their professional lives.
* I know this because her phone bleeps when any message is received and the volume is turned up to 11. It’s so loud that every message causes our neighbour’s dog to bark!
** 4 of these 6 seconds were spent entering the PIN code to unlock her phone. Top class security from this pensioner.
*** If only she’d listen to my advice to turn the bloody volume down!