What Every Merchant Should Know by Payex

Fraud: New Ways Hackers are Stealing Important Information

June 15th, 2009

Hackers are always finding new ways to compromise important information online. Here are a few new ways hackers are stealing sensitive information from your company’s computer.

Let’s face it, we all live crazy, busy lives and are always looking for the most convenient way to pay our bills. Automatic billing makes online bill pay even easier. The automatic transfer of money is very convenient; however storing accounts online leaves your information easily accessible and vulnerable to hackers.

How do hackers go about doing this? According to an article in the June issue of Digital Transactions magazine, hackers are now making unauthorized company accounts and then are transferring funds from your actual account to the “fake” company account. If you try to report this is happening, many times the trail of the inquiry is lost and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. But, even if there is a trail, many hackers work from overseas to protect themselves from the laws that are in effect here in America.

Hackers are even targeting low-paid, trusted workers to gain vital information and some manage to give it to them. By giving a hacker an email password, the employee believes that this is no big deal because anyone can have a password stolen. In a matter of seconds, the hacker is now able to seek private potentially, profitable information. Everyone wants to think that they have trustworthy employees that wouldn’t do such a thing, but things like this happen more than one may think. It’s unfathomable, yet it happens often.

On the other hand, the biggest break for a hacker is to get hired by a top-notch security company with sensitive clients. One may think that people like this can’t be hired for these positions. However, you’d be surprised how many hackers use stolen IDs and keep their records clean. They are then able to gain information by using sophisticated means to communicate to their counterparts without being detected. So, they do nothing to hurt their employer directly. They pass on all of the information they obtain to their accomplices and they do all of the “dirty” work so to speak.

Be aware of all of the new scams that are occurring online. Hackers are becoming more creative in the way they compromise a company’s important information. They are doing this in order to stay under the radar and make it less likely to get caught. So, business owners become aware of the latest scams to reduce the likelihood of becoming a victim.

You can also feel free to contact us with any questions that you may have regarding this topic. We would be happy to elaborate on this topic.

Entry Filed under: Advice