by Tim Lemieux

An Ontario lawyer advised that he got a call from someone purporting to be from Rogers, inviting him to participate in a new website offered by Rogers for commercial leasing lawyers to help them increase their business. The lawyer asked him for more information, but the person insisted that he log on to a website, before he would tell him more. He did not get the person’s name or the website address.

After the lawyer told the caller he would not log on to the website (which might be made to look like Rogers site‎ to appear more convincing), the caller said that he would “not be able to increase his business” and hung up.

It’s quite likely that the website that the caller was directing him to would have looked like a Rogers page and either contained malware or tried to get the lawyer to enter personal information (e.g. credit card information).

This kind of fraud attempt is known as a “spear phishing” scam. Traditional phishing scams involve sending mass emails in the hopes that a few targets will be duped, and are described in the article Would You Take the Bait on a Phishing Scam? from the cybercrime issue of LAWPRO Magazine. A “spear phishing” scam is targeted more specifically and uses the names of people or companies the target knows. You can read more about it in this article by Norton: Spear Phishing – A Scam, Not a Sport.

Categories: Fraud Prevention