Hackers Impersonating Company Employees

Hackers impersonating company employees is one of the tricks of the trade that they use to try to dupe people into providing them with further information or stealing money from them.

We have seen this many times before, often arising after major cyberattacks when swathes of personal information has been stolen. Ultimately, fraudsters only need a little bit of information to then contact their victims to try to dupe them into believing they are the real deal. Once they have done this, they could then trick a victim into handing over more information or transferring money to them.

You may be surprised how easily they can get away with it.

The problem of hackers impersonating company employees

The problems and worries of hackers impersonating company employees is one of the biggest risks that can come out of any form of cyberattack or data breach. Once hackers have the personal information for people who may be customers or receiving some form of service from a company, they could try to contact a person and pass themselves off as the actual company themselves.

There are a few ways that they could do this. They could impersonate a customer support agent to try to get the victim to reveal more information, or grant them access to home computers. They could even pretend to be complaint agents or employees who are dealing with an actual real data breach itself. This means that, in the wake of a data breach where you know that your personal information may have been exposed, you must be vigilant that any contact you receive could be from scammers and hackers.

They only need some personal details like your name and contact information and, perhaps, even a customer reference number to have enough to dupe people into falling for their scams.

Some infamous examples and potentials in group action claims

There have been a few infamous examples of hackers impersonating company employees, and they often stem from the group action claims that we represent people for.

An infamous one that many people know about is that many people received contact from scammers in the wake of the 2015 TalkTalk cyberattack. We have helped people in this situation where they were contacted by criminals who had legitimate information about them, such as their customer information and real data about actual complaints and service issues that customers had had. They used this to trick their victims into allowing them to access their computers where they were meant to be resolving their TalkTalk issues. In some cases, they told the victim that they had issued compensation and they asked them to check their internet banking to see if it had been received. Unfortunately, the victim would check this on the actual PC that the criminals had accessed on the belief that the hackers impersonating company employees were no longer logged into their PC. As they were still logged in, they were able to see information and trick people into accidentally transferring money over to them.

In the wake of the 2018 British Airways cyberattacks, a number of the thousands of people that we represent reported receiving suspicious contact and attempts to defraud them. It can even happen from a leak such as in the 2020 Virgin Media data leak where information was left exposed online for a period of 10 months. With such information accessible, if criminals came across it, they could misuse it to try to target people for fraud and theft.

We raise examples of ones where there may not have been any actual incidents of hackers impersonating company employees because it is important to note that the risks are still there. This is why we often say that there is no such thing as simple and small data breaches, as only a little information could be used by criminals to try to commit fraud and theft. They do not need your banking information to be able to do it, they just need to be able to contact you and trick you into believing they are real.

The GDPR and your right to compensation

The GDPR can entitle the victim of a data breach to claim compensation – we may be able to pursue your case on a No Win, No Fee basis.

Find out about your rights to claim compensation by contacting us here now for free, no-obligation legal advice.

Data protection breach legal representation

Claiming compensation for unauthorised access of your information