Barbara Corcoran is an American businesswoman. For the most part, she is famous for having founded a real estate brokerage called the Corcoran Group before selling it to NRT in exchange for $66 million in 2001. However, that hasn’t stopped her from continuing to be involved with the real estate industry, which is but one of her endeavors. In particular, interested individuals might be familiar with her role as an investor on ABC’s Shark Tank. Something that she has held for nine seasons and counting.
How Did Barbara Corcoran Lose Close to $400 Thousand in a Phishing Scam?
Very recently, Corcoran’s name has been showing up in the entertainment news because of the revelation that she has lost close to $400 thousand to a phishing scam with no real means of retrieving it. Basically, what happened was that Corcoran’s bookkeeper received an email containing an invoice for a real estate renovation that looked as though it had been sent by Corcoran’s assistant. The email looked legitimate. Furthermore, the invoice wasn’t particularly unusual on initial inspection, seeing as how Corcoran remains very much involved in the real estate industry. As such, the bookkeeper proceeded with the requested payment of $388,700 without putting too much thought into the whole matter, thus resulting in a very unpleasant surprise when they later checked in with the actual assistant. It turned out that the email address had been one letter off, which interested individuals should take as another reminder of just how important constant vigilance can be when it comes to financial matters.
Here are some important points to keep in mind for those who are concerned about phishing scams:
Phishing Scams Tend to Follow a Simple and Straightforward Formula
Phishing scams tend to follow a simple and straightforward formula. First, they pretend to be either a business or something that is known to the targeted individual. Second, they have some kind of story that is meant to convince the targeted individual to take some kind of action without thinking too much about it. There are a lot of potential weaknesses that can exist in both elements.
For starters, interested individuals should think about whether they actually have either an account or some other kind of relationship with the purported sender that could result in such a message being sent. For example, if someone gets an email asking for them to update their payment information for their Netflix account when they don’t have a Netflix account, that is an obvious give-away that is going to put more people on their guard in an instant. Moving on, interested individuals should give serious thought to whether the purported sender would ever send such a message. Simply put, the government isn’t going to ask people for their credit card information, meaning that this as well as similar requests are very suspicious to say the least. Besides this, interested individuals should examine the message through and through to see if there are any errors that cause them to take notice. Sometimes, this could mean spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, and other signs that the sender isn’t legitimate. Other times, this could be the sender calling the targeted individual by something generic when they should already know their name as well as other personal information, which could raise some eyebrows when done by a business in an era in which personalization is one of the biggest business marketing trends.
As for the story, they are always designed to inspire some kind of strong emotion on the part of the recipient so that they won’t think too much before following through with the request. For example, one scammer might write about some kind of tragedy to play on the recipient’s sense of compassion. Likewise, another scammer might threaten to cancel the recipient’s subscription to play on their sense of fear. Interested individuals should remember to never take any kind of action while they are overwhelmed by some kind of strong emotion that is interfering with their rational thought. They may or may not be targeted by a phishing scam at that moment, but chances are very good that they are going to make a less than optimal choice, meaning that such situations should be avoided as much as possible.
Phishing Scams Can Be Prevented By Some Pretty Standard Cybersecurity Measures
It should be mentioned that most phishing scams can be stopped by some pretty standard cybersecurity measures. First, one of the best ways to prevent phishing scams is to prevent them from ever reaching the targeted individuals. As such, there is a wide range of anti-phishing software that can be found out there. Some of this software exists to stop phishing scams and nothing but phishing scams, while others bundle such capabilities with other cybersecurity features for increased convenience. Second, most people have some awareness of how to see through phishing scams, with the problem being that they might not be in the right state of mind to use that awareness when confronted with such a thing. Due to this, it is very common for businesses to run programs informing their employees about what to look out for based on historical patterns as well as how they can avoid being victimized. Third, something as simple as multi-factor authentication can do a great deal to limit the damage that can be done by phishing scams. After all, even if the scammer manage to get their hands on the targeted individual’s passwords, they won’t be able to get in unless they have the phone or other physical item needed to complete the authentication process. As such, while there will still be plenty of cause for concern, there will be more time for the targeted individual to act in order to take care of the problem. Fourth, interested individuals should always put some thought into preparing for the worst case scenario in which their information is compromised. This means reporting such incidents to the relevant authorities, changing their passwords as soon as possible, monitoring their finances for signs of tampering, preparing backups ahead of time so that they can restore their routine operations as soon as possible in the event of a knock-out, and more besides.
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