Cyber theft is a serious global issue that affects all industries and people. In recent years, as new apps and programs have evolved, this has become even more prevalent, especially within the financial services world.
There are a variety of imposter scams that we would like to bring to your attention, so that you can be vigilant. Imposter scams involve a fraudster impersonating a trusted individual, business or organization to convince a target to transfer money.
In an imposter scam, fraudsters will often:
- Contact you via a phone call, email, text, online advertisement, or social media post.
- Claim to be security/technical support for a known and reputable company, such as Microsoft, or a trusted financial institution such as Charles Schwab.
- Ask you to download software and/or request remote access to your computer.
- Send you an email or text message with a link or attachment, which may ask you to approve/deny a transaction, set up new credentials, or take some other action regarding your account.
Some steps to take to avoid imposter scams include:
- Confirm the legitimacy of the organization or person trying to reach you, especially if you did not initiate the contact. If you have any doubts, reach out to your advisor before communicating further.
- Do not assume you are speaking with an institution based on caller ID. Text messages, emails, and phone calls can appear to come from a trusted institution when they are actually from a fraudster.
- Use caution and take time to research if you receive a request to send money urgently. Again—your advisor will be happy to help you decide if these situations are legitimate.
- Check the URL of the website or link sent to you by email to validate it is a legitimate site address.
- Set up 2-step authentication on all accounts, especially financial accounts.
Cybersecurity at Rebalance
At Rebalance, we take cybersecurity and theft seriously. We regularly evaluate our procedures to keep our clients’ accounts as safe and secure as possible. Additionally, in order to keep up with current industry recommendations, we recently updated our Cash Request procedures.
One of the new policies we have implemented is speaking with clients live in order to process a request for cash to be made available. While emails and voicemails may also be sent to make the request for cash, we will only be able to free up cash once we speak live with our client.
As we navigate cybersecurity together, please feel free to reach out to your advisor at any time with any questions, concerns, or issues.
