Catfishing scams can pop up any time, and it’s important for you and your team to be aware of the dangers. You and your team can work together to prevent damage to your personal and business assets.
A catfish scam means someone is using a fake identity to trick you into believing you’re in a real online friendship or romance with them. Often it will start from an unsolicited text or email that sounds like someone you know. In a moment of weakness or curiosity you may reply to the text or email. That starts the relationship, but it isn’t the relationship you expected. A successful campaign the mark, you, can either become embarrassed, humiliated, or adversely financially impacted.
In the old days the catfisher would call on the telephone, meet in person, or write letters. In today’s world with the the advent of AI and spoofing tools and can become much more lucrative for the catfisher to have multiple means of getting your information and can catfish multiple people at once.
Compare this to the days of old computing. In 1945 the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) came out. It encompassed 1,800 square feet, weighed 30 tons and used 170kW of power ENIAC could do 5,000 computations per second. The capabilities of ENIAC is now contained in an area smaller than a grain of sand.
Today’s smartphone chips can pack billions of transistors into a few square millimeters, offering superior performance with negligible power use.
What do the two have in common and how does it affect you?
The catfishers have become much more prolific. If you don’t have tools in place to help protect you and the common sense to be skeptical of these reachouts, you will be taken advantage of.
So, what can you do to protect yourself and your business?
Training your employees to not answer unknown texts, calls, or emails is a good first step. These are the gateways used by the hackers to get into your systems.
Protection such as Huntress and ConcealBrowse can assist with computer protection. Huntress and ConcealBrowse are used together to keep you safe.
ConcealBrowse is a zero trust browser. It assumes the site you are going to online is not legitimate until ConcealBrowse determines it is. Unless it is diagnosed by AI and the websites are whitelisted or protected, ConcealBrowse will keep you from going to the website.
Huntress works with built in virus and malware protection and stops bad stuff from entering your computer in the first place.
Using ConcealBrowse and Huntress will stop catfishing attempts on your computer, but will not stop catfishing attempts by text or phone call. Don’t answer phone numbers you don’t know especially text messages. I often wait for a person/number I don’t know to leave a message to determine whether it is real or not. This is why employee training is essential. Meeting with your employees at regular intervals to discuss computer safety and security is time well spent.
When you combine ConcealBrowse and Huntress with diligent employee training, you will have a much better chance of thwarting any attempts to steal your business (or personal) information.
Call me at 615-443-4842 if you have questions or need help implementing any of the above.
While I’m not an expert on governments, corporations, or hackers, I have a great track record helping “mom and pop” businesses in these areas.
In the case of government regulations, I have trusted business associates such as bookkeepers, wealth management teams and CPAs that can assist.
For corporations, we help businesses in their transition if they are purchased by other companies.
As far as protection from hackers, phishing attempts, viruses, etc., we have multiple layers of protection from zero-trust browser extensions to software that works with AI along with real security experts to protect your business from threats,
If you are interested in learning more about securing your computer systems send an email to jnay@jimnay.com. You can also call or text us at 615-443-4842.
Best,
Jim Nay
Recent Comments