The FBI recently shared a public service announcement alerting of the rise in the Tech Support Scam. In the alert, they shared that the fraudsters are also “claiming to work on behalf of government agencies to resolve computer viruses and threats from possible foreign countries or terrorist organizations.” In just the first four months of 2016, the IC3 received 3,668 complaints with adjusted losses of $2,268,982.

“The Tech Support Scam is not a new scam, in fact we’ve been seeing it for years,” said Debbie Lopez, Head of FraudDESK at Guardian Analytics, “Fraudsters are sophisticated and extremely patient. They know exactly how to manipulate dormant fraud trends and to take advantage of distracted financial institutions that may be focusing their efforts on stopping new attacks.”

Just recently a customer of Guardian Analytics experienced a fraud case that mirrored the tech scam with one of their account holders. A victim received a call from a “Microsoft Technician” and asked if they could remote access into their system. Call it perfect timing for the criminal as the victim was in fact having computer issues and gave permission to the criminal. This gave the criminal access to place malware on the victim’s computer, and then later gain access to personal information which he used to login to the victim’s online banking account.

Fortunately for the victim, his financial institution had Guardian Analytics to monitor for suspicious and abnormal behavior patterns and immediately saw an elevated risk for this victim. They froze the account and contacted the victim for further verification.
Guardian Analytics’ solutions give financial institutions the ability to easily monitor for unusual behavior patterns for their account holders and most importantly prevent fraudulent transactions from leaving the bank, fostering an even better customer relationship between the bank and account holder.

See how fraud analysts use Guardian Analytics everyday to fight financial crime.