Backgrounder

10/27/2026

Wanted to share a trick at the center of a case we recently looked at. It’s pretty simple and I think a lot of people would fall for this.

TLDR:

The scammers posed as a real investment firm: a legit-looking site, a fake CFO, a middleman who built trust over a few weeks, and even included in-person meetings in Europe.

Zoom call verifications told the victim to move his funds to a new wallet he controlled to prove ownership.

Before the call, the scammers registered an ENS name for his new wallet address with .eth at the end. ENS names point anywhere, and this pointed to the scammers' wallet.

The destination got entered as the .eth name, the wallet app resolved to the scammer's wallet, and almost $250,000 went out in one transaction. Within minutes it would hop through several wallets swapped to ETH and split up.

10/06/2026

Beware of these fake social media profiles actively targeting people: Julianna on IG, jasmnecyshunt (Snap), amberandrade08 on Telegram, emmaiocovie (Snap). They always try and get you to move off platform.

10/05/2026

We recently detected a scam with actors impersonating Bahrain-based HJ Investment W.L.L. The actors were almost certainly going for an advance-fee fraud scam, a scheme in which a large loan is never actually funded, and the real goal is to collect upfront costs from the target before disappearing. In this case, it was over $100,000.

09/17/2026

Beware of malicious websites in Google Calendar invites!
Check out how Ask Carmen Monitor browser extension conducts malicious website analysis. In this case, it was a Google Calendar invite with a malicious credential-harvesting link and several redirects to mask the malicious domain.

09/08/2026

Think your email is safe just because you changed your password? Nope!

Attackers often leave behind filters, forwarding rules, or active devices so they can keep seeing your messages. Check out a quick video showing three (3) easy ways to check Gmail and Outlook to see if your inbox may still be compromised.

Visit us here: www.backgrounder.com

08/16/2026

Account takeovers are still out of control.

The caller claimed to be Google Security, said the location looked suspicious, and asked the user to confirm a two digit code inside Google Photos. It belonged to Google's own sharing flow, which is why it felt legitimate. Right after, the user read back the six digit code that followed. That code was her two factor authentication credential and reading it aloud handed her Gmail account to the attacker.

From there the attacker set up a mail filter meant to hide replies from view. We jumped in immediately. A Backgrounder review found it was configured but never used. Access lasted several hours before we stepped in, reset the password, and moved her off SMS based verification entirely.

Simplest lesson here is no legitimate company will ever call and ask you to read back a verification code. If that happens, hang up.

What we recommend for everyone, not just this client. Use an authenticator app instead of codes sent by text or voice. Assume your email already appears in a breach dataset, because it probably does. Put a scam call and text blocking tool on your phone which will be Ask Carmen Guardian in a couple of weeks! Look into a personal information removal service to cut your exposure on data broker sites. We like Freeze and Optery! For password management we recommend 1Password.

These attacks are automated and opportunistic, running at scale against thousands at once. It rarely takes a sophisticated attacker. It takes one moment of trust.

08/10/2026

Follow us on TikTok!

TikTok

08/04/2026

Good questions and tips to protect your family’s inheritance from scammers who try to take all your money. Check out our good friend Dave Ruedger interacting with a jury duty scammer who probably was based in a US prison!

07/08/2026

Had a conversation recently that stuck and irked the s**t out of me.

Someone in my network told me about a person who just lost $1M (yes $1M) to government impersonation criminal(s). A call from someone claiming to be a federal investigator who just used scare tactics, walked the victim through “compliance procedures,” and drained the account over seven months.

Thankfully, my good friend Jessica Ronan Williford wised up to the scam...quick! She asked all the right questions!
Three things every U.S. government agency will never do:
→ Call and demand immediate payment
→ Ask you to move money to “protect” it from an investigation
→ Tell you not to hang up or talk to family / your bank
The best defense isn’t skepticism about the caller. It’s a hard rule: hang up, look up the agency’s real number, and call them back. Every legitimate agency understands and expects that.

This category is quietly rising and each victim loses six or seven figures, not $200 anymore.
CyberSecurity

06/30/2026

Got a 4th of July Evite from someone you “sort of know”? STOP. ✋
The new shape of phishing isn’t an invoice or a fake shipping notice. It’s a birthday party invitation that asks you to “verify identity” before you can view it.
That’s not Evite — that’s a data harvest.
If you’ve already clicked, full remediation steps are at the link in our bio. 🛡️
CyberSecurity DigitalSafety DataProtection ScamAwareness FightFraud