Business owners nowadays have to be more vigilant to protect them from scammers eyeing their business. Most of them target small companies since they see security and awareness levels are not that tight. Here below are their different approaches identified and revealed:

There are “supposedly” deaf callers using Telephone Relay Services which are used by crooks to mask their identity. While Federal Communications Commission ordered that this type of calls must be registered by stating their name, address and contact number, scammers on the other hand, are using pay as you go mobile phones so that they can’t be tracked. Scammers use TRS to place orders and to conceal their identities at the same time. Small business owners have to pay particular attention to this kind of calls especially if they are ordering bulk of goods. We have to instruct employees that it would be best if we could verify the credit card identity and status with the issuing bank. If not, go the extra mile to confirm if the call is a valid order.

We might also come across emails from Better Business Bureau that are labelled as customer complaints. It comes with an attachment and if opened, can potentially get confidential information from our work computers as it is infected by a virus. Our protection would be to regularly scan our computers from this kind of malwares and also use Microsoft’s Sender Policy Framework that automatically evaluates incoming emails whether they are legitimate or not.
Scammers might also pretend to be calling from Yellow pages to update contact details of your business. We must orient our storekeepers never to entertain directory listing calls that would send invoice or ask for the company’s billing details. Remember that simple page listings are free and only boldfaced listings and those that come with advertisements are charged.

Swindlers might also take advantage of our most commonly ordered office supplies. Their modus operandi is to send unordered supplies and bill it to the store. Swindlers of this kind will call us and get the name of the person in charge of purchasing supplies so they can properly address the invoices. There are also times when decimal points are moved in price first quoted, for example $50.00 for one ream of bond paper originally priced at $5.00. We might overlook these details and pay what is not due to us.