Business scams on the increase during COVID-19 (coronavirus)

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Working from home has increased the opportunity for scammers

I don’t know when the first telephone scam was recorded but we know it was long before the new Working From Home. And I know for sure automated call have been around for over a decade. Even so, they are still pretty rubbish but with the technology of automated calls improving all the time it won’t be long before we can’t differentiate between a human and a machine phoning us (the Turing test?)

Amazon Prime account payment error is the current favourite and the perennial Microsoft customer services call to say you have a problem with your computer that they can fix remotely. It’s annoying and frustrating to be interrupted with these calls.

And of course, email scams are as old as email itself. From the Nigerian prince offering to share their wealth, Arab business men that need to get billions out of the country or the blackmailing emails for watching adult videos using Bitcoin as the pay-off currency. And perhaps the worst kind is the ones that encrypt all your data after clicking a link in an email known as malware and will only release the key to retrieve your data on payment of Bitcoin. A typical one is the ‘Email suspension notice - Microsoft Community’ scam purportedly coming from Microsoft Office 365. These are called phishing scams and are the most popular nowadays.

All these methods work, or they wouldn’t keep doing it. So vigilance is super important and this needs to be trained in to your staff. Lest your business suffer.

Take a look at the work Businesses Against Scams run by Surrey County Council is doing to help you and your staff avoid these scams. They are working with National Trading Standards who are working to educate people and business of the risks and measures you can take.

If you’d like to talk to us about our efforts to avoid scammers please call David on 020 8991 1800 or email us us at sales@corporateclothingwear.com