The IT Experts

Today we will discuss how you can identify and address popular online scams. Here are three tips that can help you handle these scams in the best way possible.

Trust No One

Scammers will often try to impersonate someone you know or a business you work with. There are even reports of scammers impersonating high-level executives to swindle companies out of house and home. The best thing you can do to identify these types of scams is to follow up directly with the individual using whatever contact information you have on hand outside of the message you received. The reason for this is to guarantee the identity of the individual and to discredit the suspicious request. Always cross-reference these types of messages with the contact information you have on hand, or in the case of someone within your office, possibly even face-to-face.

It’s Too Good (or Bad) to Be True

The promise of prizes can be very intriguing to your employees, especially if they don’t recall signing up for a contest or giveaway. These types of scams are designed to harvest information from victims and potentially spread threats to infrastructures through downloaded attachments. Other times, the threat of legal action for a crime that was not committed can make a user download an attachment. In either case, if it sounds too good or bad to be true, chances are it isn’t.

You Must Act Immediately

If a message is urging you to take immediate action without taking the time to think about things, chances are it’s from a scammer. They might be in a rush to convince you to pay a bill, update financial information, confirm order information, reset a password, and so on. If something is so important that it needs immediate attention, and they are sending you an email, chances are you should be at least a little skeptical of it.

If any of the three conditions outlined above are met, you might be looking at a scammer. If you find yourself in a difficult situation and you need a second opinion, we are more than happy to assist with that. To learn more, reach out to KB Technologies Managed IT at (954) 834-2800.

Peace and Quiet

It’s hard to focus when there is a ton of noise happening all around you. This is perhaps one of the first things a remote worker might notice, especially if they have never worked remotely before. They should invest in a desk in a nice, quiet part of the home, far away from the hustle and bustle of the house. For some, space is limited, but it’s still important to put together a workspace that has as few distractions as possible.

Clutter-Free

Another issue that many encounter while working remotely is that they use what is affectionately referred to as “the community desk,” or rather, the desk that everyone in the house uses to get work done. Clutter tends to accumulate when so many people use the desk. If you can keep your workspace clean, you’re more likely to remain focused on the task at hand.

Nature Is Surprisingly Effective

If you stay in the same space for too long, it can create unhealthy habits. One way you can keep these in check is to get some natural light, or at least set up your desk so that it receives some natural light, like near a window. You can also add some vegetation to your workspace, like fresh flowers or a plant. This can work wonders for a person’s mental health and can in general make the workspace more comfortable.

Breaks Take On a New Meaning

Anyone who has tried to work from home will know that it is distracting and overwhelming at times. It can be hard to know what is and should be a priority. To avoid this burnout and overwhelm, breaks are important so that you don’t grow too stressed or stretched too thin with multitasking. The breaks you take should also be more meaningful, and you should make a concerted effort to step away from your computer for 10 or 15 minutes at a time to take a breather.

Speaking Of To-Do Lists

One major challenge with working remotely is staying on task. If you have a daily task list, you will be more likely to stick to it. Start with the time-intensive tasks and work your way through towards the others that might not need as much prioritization. One can feel a lot of pressure, especially in regards to the pressure they place on themselves, so taking some of this off by assigning priority to certain tasks can go a long way toward removing some of the stress.

KB Technologies Managed IT can help you implement technology solutions to aid your remote workers. To learn more, reach out to us at (954) 834-2800.

Essentially, what happens is that the hacker places a malicious link in a Google Docs comment and uses the @ symbol to directly ping the target through a targeted email. Since the email comes directly from Google Docs, users may not have any reason to suspect that it could be malicious in nature. This particular strategy was observed by Avanan, which reported it on their blog. The attacks themselves are carried out using Google Docs and Google Slides, and are often leveraged against users of Microsoft Outlook.

These attacks are generally quite successful because of how easily they can bypass spam filters. Since Google is a well-known and trusted entity, it is on most Allow Lists, meaning that their messages will get through to your inbox in most cases. Furthermore, since the attack itself is carried out using the comments, only the attacker’s name is showcased, not their email address. This opens up tons of possibilities for hackers to fool users into thinking someone within their organization is sharing a document with them, even when it is just a hacker attempting to cause trouble.

In short, the moral of the story here is that you should never click on links that look or seem suspicious by any stretch of the imagination–--especially if they appear to be from a service that your business doesn’t utilize, like Google Workspace. If it does use Google Workspace, still treat it with caution and follow up with whoever the user is to ensure its authenticity. It never hurts to clarify the sender of a link, and it sure beats downloading some random threat that could leave your business in shambles. You can also double-check the destination for a link by hovering over it to ensure that it is sending you to the correct location, or at least the one that you expect it to. 

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