Protecting yourself from fraud

Cybercrime continues to increase; in 2018, £1.2 billion* was stolen by fraudsters.

Keeping your information secure from criminals is a top priority of ours. To protect your data, we regularly review security procedures to ensure that we are following best practices recommended by financial institutions, and other industry experts.

While we are taking clear and actionable steps in our own business’s security measures; it is important that you also remain vigilant and are aware of the potential threats to keep yourself protected.

Email Scams

Be careful when receiving emails, often scammers will replicate addresses of your contacts so that the email looks official. Never click on links in emails that you do not trust, not even to unsubscribe.

It is important to note that there have been several instances in recent months of scam emails, supposedly from HMRC. These phishing emails are aiming to gather confidential information. HMRC will never email you to notify you of a tax rebate, ask you to pay tax because of an under payment or ask for your personal information (such as your full address). If you receive an email and are unsure of its authenticity, do not click any of the links or respond. If in any doubt about a message from HMRC, please speak to your Gerald Edelman advisor.

Text Messages

Scammers can now make text messages appear as though they are sent from a bank, contact or organisation that you trust. It goes without saying, but you should never click on a link in a text message, or call the number provided, unless you are sure of the source. If you are in doubt, call the bank or organisation in question to confirm the message is from them.

Telephone Scams

Scammers often call claiming to be from an organisation you know, often a bank. They will ask for your details to prove your identity. If you are unsure if it is a scam call, do not give out your details, hang up and call the organisation in question directly. It is recommended you wait a few minutes before doing this as scammers can fake dial tones and stay on the line after hanging up.

We are encouraging our clients to embrace a series of measures to help protect their identity and mitigate potential security risks. We also recommend using third party security solutions that offer email protection against impersonation, email attachments and embedded URLs.

Below are four key areas that we encourage you to review to ensure you are protected.

1. Protect all passwords by enforcing changes on a regular basis
2. Surf the Web safely by always checking the URL of the website
3. Protect information on social networks by limiting the personal data displayed
4. Protect your email accounts with appropriate security software

Please note the following:

• If you change any personal details, notify us in a secure manner so that we can update our records
• If you suspect that your email account has been compromised, call us immediately
• Gerald Edelman will never change bank details during a transaction and will never communicate any change of bank details by unsecure email
• If you are in any doubt about any email, letter or phone call you receive, please confirm with your contact first to verify the communication. Do not reply to or act on any requests until you are sure that the contact is genuine

If you have any questions about how to protect yourself from cyber-crime, you can visit Action Fraud, a government-run website offering advice on all types of fraud, including online fraud.