Protect Your Business Against Potential Threats

You spend lots of time and effort in building up your business. Don’t let scammers ruin your reputation and damage your bottom line. Scammers are known to target businesses of all sizes. To protect yourself against these offenders, learn about the tell-tale signs that are typical of a scam and keep your company’s employees informed as well.

Utility Supplier Scams

The offender poses as a well-known utility provider and demands that you settle a payment problem that happened with the last invoice. During the call, they threaten to cut off service if payment is not made immediately.

Fake Invoice Scams

Even small businesses can have a large number of invoices to process every day. Keeping track of every transaction can be a headache. Scammers are aware of this and will sometimes send out fake invoices for commonly used goods or services, such as raw materials or cleaning services. Make sure you and your staff are alert to this possibility and are ready to spot fake invoices before they are paid.

Related Article: Fake Invoice Scams: Is Your Business at Risk?

Office Supplies That You Didn’t Order

You receive a phone call asking you to confirm an existing order for office supplies or offer you free samples. If you say yes, the merchandise will be delivered to your office soon enough, with unpaid invoices waiting to be settled. If you refuse, they may use the recorded telephone call during which you said yes to force you into paying. According to the law, merchandise showed up at your doorstep without your ordering can be kept legally for free

Tech Support Scams

If your computer is not equipped with the latest antivirus and popup blocker, fake security messages may pop up saying your computer has been infected with a virus and to solve the problem, you need to call a tech support number. Their end goal is to get you to pay for some fixes to a problem that is nonexistent and if possible, sign up for some expensive useless computer maintenance program. Many scammers also try to extract sensitive data including credit card information during the process.

Social Engineering Scams

Hackers targeting your organization often use social engineering to obtain sensitive and confidential information to finally gain access to the business’s system. Social engineering may take the form of a phishing email, fake social media login pages, or a telephone call from someone supposedly from the same company asking the employee for sensitive information, in order to resolve some urgent problems that could result in the said employee getting fired.

Related Article: 7 Scams All Business Need to Watch Out For

The Bottom Line

To better protect your business against potential scammers, keep yourself updated with the latest frauds. The Federal Trade Commission is a good source of information with regard to this issue. To avoid utility supplier and office supply scams, consider switching to a digital document management solution.

About Universal Funding

Universal Funding is a private funding source that has funded thousands of businesses and more than $2 billion since 1998. We turn your accounts receivable into the funding you need through invoice factoring and can have capital in your hands in a matter of days.