Companies, Your Lack of Attention Is Disturbing

Somehow, one of my many email work addresses in the past few weeks must have found its way onto the dark web, where scammers and spammers go to find targets for their illicit activities. I get emails claiming to be from Rackspace letting me know about all the emails I have that couldn’t be delivered, from American Express letting me know about recent charges on my company card, from Norton and McAfee about my recent subscription renewals, from PayPal and Square looking for account verification, and from the Social Security Administration letting me know about changes to my benefits. I get a bunch of emails from companies in China encouraging me to buy metalworking supplies, electronics components, or logistics services. I get solicitations from companies in the Middle East asking me to submit RFPs for their latest gas and oil exploration projects. I get emails from an elderly woman in the Netherlands (or is it Belgium) who wants me to have her priceless antique grand piano. I even get emails claiming to be from my own company letting me know about Zoom meetings I’m supposed to attend, contracts I’m supposed to sign, or banking information I’m supposed to update. All this is in addition to the standard online lottery winnings and banks looking to distribute the assets of some late African business tycoon.

When I have the time, I often do a basic web search for an email address where I can go to report the fraud to the company that is being misrepresented. I figure that they would want to know that someone is fraudulently trying to act on their behalf to steal their clients’ information. I figure they would want to stop the fraud and take action against the people behind it. Unfortunately, that’s often not the case.

In most cases, I get no response at all, and seemingly no action is ever taken. In some cases, I get back an auto-reply email thanking me for forwarding the email to them and letting me know that they will investigate; but they never seem to do anything. Or I get a long explanation of things I can do to avoid becoming a victim of fraud. Or I get requests with very elaborate instructions for adequately reporting the fraud, including how to capture the email headers and routing protocols, forms to fill out, and government agencies and departments within the company that I need to contact. And in some very rare cases, I actually get a response in which the company not only thanks me for the heads-up but actually tells me what they are doing to address it. Kudos to these last few companies, and to the others, shame on you for not doing more.

I assume that most companies are satisfied if I just delete the email and leave it at that. As long as I don’t give the fraudsters the information they want and don’t open any attachments, no harm is done, right?

Wrong. Fraud severely damages company reputations, often causing long-term harm. It erodes trust, leads to bad publicity, diminishes customer loyalty, and can cause significant revenue declines or reduced market share. Customers are likely to stop trusting platforms or companies with their personal data or doing business with them if they are linked to scams or data breaches.

In today’s highly connected world, reputations can be trashed for everyone around the world to see with just a few keystrokes, so companies must do more to mitigate against fraud. Sadly, it would seem that too many are ignoring the reports and leaving things to chance, placing all their trust in the hands of consumers not to click on malicious links or open malicious attachments.

I suspect that for many companies, trying to go after the fraudsters is seen as a waste of time and resources. Fraud is just so prevalent, and every time one scam is squashed, another one pops up almost immediately. Furthermore, since many of these scams likely originate in some remote country in eastern Europe or Asia, even if they are located, apprehension and prosecution of the offender is darn-near impossible. I get it, but I also think that some things just might be worth a try. Who knows, you just might get lucky. Company reputations mean everything and must be protected. Isn’t that worth a little more effort?

Leonard Klie is the editor of CRM magazine. He can be reached at lkile@infotoday.com.