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Somos Soundbytes - Fraud Fighters Unite S1E2: Social Engineering with Jaddeus Fears

Aug 27, 2024

In today's world, nearly every consumer has a smartphone and uses it to conduct important matters, both personal and professional. This means there’s more opportunity than ever before for bad actors to target victims through social engineering, or the act of manipulating people into providing sensitive information or doing things that compromise security.   

On this episode of Somos Soundbytes – Fraud Fighters Unite, host Jaime Zetterstrom, Somos’ VP of Product Management, sat down with longtime fraud mitigation expert Jaddeus Fears to discuss social engineering schemes, and how phone users and organizations can guard against them. 

Social engineering scams take a variety of forms, a few of which Jaddeus explained. Pretexting, for example, happens when a fraudster creates a fake scenario to convince someone to release information. Imagine getting a text from someone claiming to be a colleague in need of access codes for an online conference room. A scenario that is not far-fetched and could easily affect any of us. 

Widespread and harrowing though it may be, social engineering can be combatted through better user awareness and tools, like Somos’ RealNumber Do Not Originate (DNO) for voice and text, which harnesses a list of phone numbers that should never originate a call or text message, allowing carriers and mobile providers to identify potential fraud before it happens. 

To hear more from Jaddeus, check out the full conversation here!