FEATURE Scams And Spams And Phishes A spate of malicious attempts at deception keep REALTORS® on high alert for cyber crime Orlando REALTORS® have been under a particularly sustained cyber assault. Over the past few months alone, members have been faced with: • An impressively formatted e-mail appearing to be from the association. The e-mail included an image of President Bruce Elliott and the association logo, but carried a risk of delivering a virus to unsuspecting recipients upon opening. (If you receive this e-mail, do not open it.) See Exhibit A. • Not one but two separate warnings from Florida Realtors about scammers who twice sent out fake invoices from a nonexistent real estate board, seeking payment for renewal. The invoices appeared deceptively legitimate with a "Make check payable to” address listed at a post office in Deerfield Beach, Fla. See Exhibit B. "This is not a simple scam," says Bill Martin, Florida Realtors CEO. "High-tech criminals put a great deal of work and planning into this." The criminals created a truly impressive Internet Chicanery: The Basics You’ve probably heard all of the buzzwords related to schemes that take place on the web — clones, phishing, malware, worms, viruses, and Trojan horses. The vast majority of malicious software are installed by some action from a user, such as clicking an e-mail attachment or downloading a file from the Internet. Prevention is key. ATTACK OF THE CLONES! Cloning is perhaps the least dire of the illegal activity that takes place on the Internet. Nonetheless, it certainly can prove distressing. Essentially, the cybercriminal takes a combination of your name, an image of your likeness and perhaps other information personal to you, and creates a new social media profile. One day, you might see your face and name pop up in the “people you might know” bar on Facebook or LinkedIn and feel alarmed, or perhaps a friend sends you a message alerting you to a cloned profile. Alternately, cybercriminals may set up cloned websites that look almost identical to say, your bank’s website, encouraging you to enter personal information. In fact, some scams entail a robocall with a recording that encourages calling back and typing in bank account numbers, or visiting a mock, cloned website. EXHIBIT A — Scam E-mail 12 Orlando REALTOR® September / October 2017
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