2 Illinois Seniors Lose Thousands Of Dollars In Phishing Scams

In case you don't know what the term "phishing" means, let's get that out of the way first by explaining that "phishing" and "spoofing" often go hand in hand. Here's how the FBI describes both:

Spoofing:

Spoofing is when someone disguises an email address, sender name, phone number, or website URL—often just by changing one letter, symbol, or number—to convince you that you are interacting with a trusted source.

For example, you might receive an email that looks like it’s from your boss, a company you’ve done business with, or even from someone in your family—but it actually isn’t.

Phishing:

Phishing schemes often use spoofing techniques to lure you in and get you to take the bait. These scams are designed to trick you into giving information to criminals that they shouldn’t have access to.

In a phishing scam, you might receive an email that appears to be from a legitimate business and is asking you to update or verify your personal information by replying to the email or visiting a website. The web address might look similar to one you’ve used before. The email may be convincing enough to get you to take the action requested.

There are also these variations of phishing:

• Vishing scams happen over the phone, voice email, or VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) calls.
• Smishing scams happen through SMS (text) messages.
• Pharming scams happen when malicious code is installed on your computer to redirect you to fake websites.

If You've Got Seniors In Your Life, Please Make Sure That They're On Guard For These Types Of Scams, Because They're Definitely Targeting Seniors Every Day

We don't have to look any farther than Palos Hills, Illinois for examples of what can happen when senior citizens are targeted by scammers using a phishing attack. Last year around the holidays, a Palos Hills man lost nearly $30,000 to a phishing scam, which you can read about here.

This year, in just the last few weeks, two more Palos Hills senior citizen residents fell prey to scammers in two separate phishing scams. According to published reports, one victim was contacted by what she thought was her bank. She was told to withdraw almost $25,000 from her account and send it to a bitcoin account that turned out to be phony.

Patch.com:

A few days later, on May 2, another resident reported receiving a message that their computer had a virus. The message prompted them to contact Apple customer service and gave a phone number to call.

The resident called the number, who was told to send six different gift cards totaling $11,000. Once the resident realized they had been scammed, they called their bank. The resident was able to recover $7,000.