Scammers highlight the urgency so as not to give the employee time to think or check with someone else. And the message makes clear that “speed is of the essence” and “you’ll be paid back by the end of the day” (of course!). The task might be, say, to transfer funds to a contractor or purchase gift certificates of a certain value. The newbie, of course, is happy to oblige. They send an e-mail supposedly from the boss or someone senior (but using a non-company address) asking the employee to do a task “right away”. Scammers exploit this to trick new employees. This is especially true if the instruction came from their immediate supervisor or even one of the company founders. Someone wants it done, so done it must be. And this can lower the new employee’s vigilance: they hastily carry out most any task without stopping to think where it came from, whether it sounds reasonable, or whether it’s their business at all. Task one: transfer money to scammersįor the first few days in a new job the employee is likely not quite up to speed, yet keen to appear so in the eyes of colleagues and superiors. And once they’ve got your e-mail, then it’s time for some social engineering. Secondly, many companies simply use the employee’s first name, or first and last names, as their e-mail usernames, so all that’s needed is to check which system is in use to be able to work out the address.

Firstly, there are lots of e-mail lookup tools to help with this. Knowing the names, you can either find or figure out their e-mail addresses. This is usually enough to identify the new person’s manager (through the same social network or the corporate website). And that’s when the freshly minted employee attracts the attention of scammers.Īs a rule, such social-media posts give the names of both the employee and the company, as well as the job title. Often, companies themselves announce there how happy they are to welcome a new team member. At the same time there are certain “rituals” that many new hires go in for these days - one of which being posting on social media (most commonly, but not exclusively, on LinkedIn) about starting a new job. Much ado with little understanding of what’s going on. The first few days in a new workplace are commonly packed with team meetings, trainings, onboarding sessions, and so on.

Eugene kaspersky blog