Police in the city of East Hampton issued a scam alert on Monday for a post circulating on Facebook.
According to the police notice, in the last few hours a post has circulated on Facebook about an alleged 2-year-old boy who has been found in the vicinity of East Hampton. The police warned people to open their eyes and ignore the post, because it does not correspond to a real event and it is a “phishing” scam.
“This is not real, delete this post and do not share it. This is a phishing scam, posted in the hopes of getting clicks and possibly spreading viruses or hacking your social media profile. Please delete and do not open or share the fake post,” the East Hampton Police notice says.
The word phishing means identity theft. It is a social engineering technique that cybercriminals use to fraudulently obtain confidential information from users and thus appropriate the identity of those people. The objective is to obtain data such as passwords, credit card numbers, banking information, among others, to use or sell them.
Attackers can use emails, SMS or social media messages to trick victims. Phishing emails can include malicious links that lead to fake or malware-infected web pages. They can also ask recipients to open attachments.
According to the Consumer Advisory Division of the Federal Trade Commission, there are four steps you should take to protect yourself from phishing:
1. Protect your computer using security software. Set the software to update automatically so it can deal with any new security threats.
2. Protect your cell phone by setting the software to update automatically. These updates could provide you with critical protection against security threats.
3. Protect your accounts using multi-factor authentication. Some accounts offer additional security by requiring two or more credentials to log into your account. This is called multi-factor authentication, and it makes it harder for scammers to log into your accounts if they get your username and password.
4. Protect your data by making backup copies. Back up your computer data to an external hard drive or to the cloud. Also back up your phone data.
