Alert! Know How To Fraud Online Hunting Small-Scale Business

The most common kinds of social engineering online scammers use against small businesses (photo: Kaspersky)

JAKARTA - Last November Google announced resistance to online fraudsters targeting entrepreneurs, where perpetrators posing as tech giants have made small business owners pay for the creation of a Business Profile, a service that was initially free for everyone.

Small-scale businesses, representing more than 90% of the entire business population, are in demand by various online scammers out there. In contrast to those focused on individuals, B2B sector fraudsters apply a more individual approach to creating efficient social engineering schemes.

Kaspersky outlined the most commonly used social engineering scheme for online fraudsters to trap small entrepreneurs as follows:

Imitating trusted suppliers

Unlike large companies, small-scale businesses may lack resources or special departments to check subcontractors to differentiate malicious online scammers at an early stage.

The fraudster will lure entrepreneurs with very profitable offerings, flexible provisions, and most importantly, a website that appears reliable forging original brand resources. However, when an invoice with a slight spelling error on the company's behalf was paid, the new business partner just disappeared.

A fake event

Online fraudsters know how important growth opportunities are for entrepreneurs and don't miss out on the opportunity to profit from fake industrial events.

Online fraudsters will send invitations to conferences, roundtables, or awards that offer famous speakers and interesting discussions as well as sell tickets to events that will never happen through seemingly good pages.

Exercise through bad reviews

Scammer knows very well that reputation can sometimes be interpreted as more profit for the business. That way, they will write negative reviews about hotels, restaurants, and other facilities, then send messages via email, offer to delete reviews and earn some money from Google, TripAdvisors, or other websites.

Spear phishing

Spear phishing is one of the most popular and easy-to-application methods to get all the information necessary to steal money from the company (detail of bank account login, password, etc.).

In this case, online fraudsters will send direct emails to people in charge of the company's budget, such as organizational owners or accountants. Then they will disguise themselves as banks, partners, or colleagues by urging to ask for payment or information about employees or company accounts.