Being a victim of a data breach is traumatic enough. The fear of the financial and reputational damage, the abuse of the data in the marketplace, and not to mention the years and years of trying to right the ship that is your data. As if all this isn’t bad enough, now the scammers are taking advantage of your anxiety and preying on it as well. This interesting and very sad information came to us from Komando in their article, “Don’t fall for this scam site that promises to pay you back for data breaches.”
Affected parties of data breaches are left with little hope for justice from the hackers and the organizations that failed to protect their data. But if that wasn’t enough, a group of scammers set up a fake government website targeting victims of data breaches – but if you fall for it, personal data is compromised.
The website leads to numerous forms where you’re asked to provide personal information like your first and last name, credit card number, and social security number to verify your identity. In a normal situation, you would likely know this is suspicious, but remember the anxiety level that already exists. And more importantly, the U.S. government will never request personal information over the web.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
