Chargeback Pros cryptocurrency fraud investigation tips and tricks right now? 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 additional details on crypto fraud recovery services.
An attack that directly or indirectly targets your customers would be disastrous not only for the customers but also for your company. The public relations catastrophe alone could be enough to ruin the business, not to mention the financial aspect. It could take years for people to trust you again, if ever. We’re not saying you’ve hired any shady characters, but employees are a common source of security breaches — 60 percent of them occur within the company, according to a survey by the International Data Corporation [source: Staff Monitoring]. For that reason, employees should be given access to only as much sensitive information as they need to do their jobs, and no one person should be able to access all data systems. Employees should be required to get permission before they install any kind of software on their work computers. Lock up laptops when they’re not in use.
A terrible scam-azon (Yes, that deal really is too good to be true): How it works: You’re doing some online shopping, as one does. You see what looks like a great deal on Amazon, a site you totally trust, and place an order. What’s really going on: The seller’s a scammer; they’re going to send you a counterfeit product, or nothing at all, and they’ll still get your money. The big picture: These scammers take advantage of Amazon’s policies to profit. They post delivery dates that are three or four weeks from the date of purchase. Since Amazon pays its sellers every two weeks, the scammers will receive payment long before you discover that it was a scam. This scam technique hurts not just buyers, but other sellers as well. Rob Ridgeway, who sells board games through Amazon, complains that fake sellers are stealing his business. He’s reported many of the scammers to Amazon, but more just keep coming. “I continue to play ‘whack-a-mole,’ trying to remove fake sellers,” Ridgeway told BuzzFeed News. Avoidance maneuver: Watch out for new sellers (also known as “just launched” sellers), and take a careful look at the seller’s reviews before you buy from him or her. If you do fall victim to a scam, contact Amazon; their A-to-Z guarantee says that they have to refund you if you received a fake product (or none at all).
Hacking is an attack directly on computer systems or websites that contain financial information. Merchant account takeovers is a type of fraud that have been trending upwards over the last few years but exploded in 2020 and 2021. This is when a fraudster logs into a person’s merchant account (Amazon, Uber, Venmo) and uses saved payment information to make purchases for themselves. Merchant account takeovers can happen when a person uses the same password across multiple online accounts. If that log in information is leaked from any one website, scammers can do something called “credential stuffing”, where they use programs to test that log in information across hundreds or thousands of popular websites, hoping to get a hit. The best way to combat this type of fraud is to use strong, unique passwords for online accounts. Use a password manager can create and store unique passwords with ease. Learn more about password managers here.
Traditional recovery, however, involves lengthy and often costly civil litigation, with no guarantee of recovering funds. According to MetaMask’s support product lead Alex Herman, digital asset recovery is difficult due to the cryptocurrency’s “pseudo-anonymous” and “immutable” nature. “While traditional systems opt for transactions to be reversible and accounts to be frozen, crypto has prioritized the control of the individual user and decentralized systems. Bad actors can also use obfuscation techniques to make it harder to track stolen funds,” Herman told Blockworks.
