Every chance I get, when talking about a story, I always make sure to tell people to check their stuff. Maybe I’m old school, but my father said that I should wait until my statement comes in the mail.
In earlier versions of the blog before I learned how to properly move my stuff without losing data, I talked about my own credit card issues. No, I didn’t give out my credit card number and tell people to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars that I just don’t have.
I talked about companies or situations where something happened and I needed to get a new card. While I made sure not to mention any companies by name, I did make sure that my story got heard, and the advice I’ve always done.
Maybe my father didn’t understand that if he saw an unauthorized charge on my account, he’d ask me and ask why I didn’t know about it. Maybe he’d tell me to call the credit card company and tell them about the charge.
But I didn’t do that. I would log on to the bank’s web site, and I would review everything. Even having a representative call me that I had delbt with if absolutely necessary.
This was about the time of a true story that DJ Terry of the mix recently told me about. While I wasn’t using ACH, I was using a credit card.
Zeus was known as a Banking Trojan.
The Zeus trojan virus was first created in 2007, when hackers in Eastern Europe used it to target the United States Department of Transportation. While it’s hard to say for certain who created it, the attack really took off when its malicious code became public in 2011. Since then, it has spawned dozens of variants that have kept internet security experts and law enforcement busy.
Yet another paragraph says:
The two primary goals of the Zeus trojan horse virus are stealing people’s financial information and adding machines to a botnet. Unlike many types of malware, most Zeus variants try to avoid doing long-term damage to the devices they infect. Their aim is to avoid detection from antivirus software. The longer they last, the more likely the hacker is to pick up valuable information from your financial institution.
To read more, please view this croud strike article titled THE ZEUS TROJAN MALWARE — DEFINITION AND PREVENTION so you can protect yourself from this.
Unfortunately Zeus )otherwise known as game over zeus trojan) is still around today. But I wasn’t taken advantage that way, as I didn’t run stupid files because I was told to.
As I’ve also written, I also got taken advantage of when looking for AVG Antivirus. I found a page that said it was AVG and I installed it.
This AVG however claimed that my brand new computer contained harmful files and asked what to do. Knowing this was a brand new machine, I knew I was bitten. This is known as Scareware.
Yes, even the best of us get bitten, and I also talked about it at the time.
But Terry is telling me a different type of story. This story is of a company who potentially lost $590,000 thanks to the Game Over Zeus trojan I linked above. And, as we find out, the owner of the company did exactly what I’ve been trying to tell people for quite a long time.
If he didn’t check the bank transactions, he could’ve lost quite more than this, and the bank was found to not have correct security procedures for the time.
While I only lost $10-$20, $590,000 from a business account is a lot different and ACH works differently than a credit or debit card transaction.
To this day, I check both my bank and my credit card. If I use the debit card, I also make sure I’m alerted.
One of the first things I did when turning on the debit card was make sure I was getting alerts for transactions. I sent $10 here $10 there from my bank to Apple Cash. Not getting the alerts, I went to the bank to see why I wasn’t. After some working together, I found what I needed to do and turned it on.
Now I get email and text messages and alerts even if I’m the one withdrawing cash or even making a purchase using the debit card.
I want people to listen to the 22.8mb file from Cyber Crime Magazine because this really harps on what I’ve been discussing for awhile now. If this doesn’t get the point across on why I harp on people checking their stuff, I don’t know what will.
With breaches on the rise, and sites like Databreaches out there reporting school and health care stuff, I don’t know what is.
Some were affected by the Target Breach in this community. You called everyone you did business with and gave them new details. I know this. If you were compromised then because you recognized the issue, but yet you didn’t recognize something similar to the story you’ll hear in the linked mp3, you still need help.
Please check out the mp3 file, please check out email host security so you’re aware of what’s out there.
This is a true story, and as I said, if we don’t tell our story we will never learn.
Please make it a great day, and please stay safe.
Jared Rimer
The Jared Rimer Network
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