Did you know that roughly 96% of worldwide email traffic is spam? Or that one of the more recent scams is to text someone an innocent or flirtatious message, followed by, “Whoops, wrong number,” in hopes of opening a conversation? Or that iPhone scammers are 
now using the TestFlight app to avoid Apple’s approval process for new apps and convince people to install malicious software?
“Wrong Numbers, Fake Invoices, and Catfishing: How to Avoid the Top Internet Scams” was recently published by PCMag.com. It covers all those issues and more. It also gives clear and simple instructions on how to avoid scams.
Consider this plan:
- Read the article.
- Share with your staff (and friends and family).
- Consider whether this might give you a chance to do some informal email marketing/client service by sending your active clients the link and a brief email warning about how fraud schemes are increasing. No sales pitch about your services, just a warning from a professional.
- Then consider whether to also send that to former clients whose files were closed in the last year.
Practice Pointer: Protect your clients’ privacy! Never send an email to groups of different clients (and their email addresses) in the “To:” line. Always use the “BCC:” line so you aren’t sharing their private information with other recipients of your email. When sending BCC, group emails in small batches to no more than 30 or so recipients to avoid inadvertently being flagged as spam.