The biggest drawback of the online world is fighting a daily battle against hackers and scammers. In a previous life I worked in risk and compliance and even 20 years ago my staff passed on so many attempted scams they had blocked I was able to fill two A4 arch files with examples to use in training sessions. With this background, added to being a crime writer and mingling with other writers of the genre, it was particularly galling to be nearly caught out the other week.
Private citizens can keep their online security tightly battened down if they wish. However, we writers are out there for all to see. We want to be noticed, we want followers on our Facebook/ Twitter/ Instagram/ TikTok accounts. We have to be out there in order to sell our books and our publishers, agents and readers expect it. If we are successful as authors most of our followers will be people we do not know personally and some will want to engage with us. All the ‘how to market’ guides recommend interacting with your followers to boost your brand, which means making contact with strangers.
It is relatively easy for scammers to get hold of lists of email addresses, phone numbers and social media accounts. Their business model is pretty crude and involves scattergunning (say) 100,000 contacts in the hope that one will fall for it. The attack can then become more subtle and more focussed. Given I’m a member of several writing forums with about 30,000 members all told, some of you will be being hit every day. So here are some thoughts on staying safe.
Facebook Friends. You will probably have your page set so that your posts are only read by ‘friends’, and there are further security options to tighten this further. I only let people I know personally or who move within the same communities as me become friends. A very common occurrence is for one of your genuine friend’s accounts to be hacked or cloned. If you receive a new request from someone who you think is already a friend, check your friends list. If the friend is already on the list, the new approach is from a scammer and you should message your friend to warn them (using the original profile, not the new one) . And NEVER ‘copy and paste this post’ from a genuine friend’s page, no matter how sincere it is, or join quizzes such as ‘What’s your pirate name?’ as these are often started with malicious intent and you are opening yourself up for attack.
New Facebook Friends. I am approached from time to time with friend requests from acquaintances, often from Guernsey where I used to live. I also get requests from people who are already friends with one or more of my existing list. Generally I will check their profile to see how many friends we have in common. Often its only one, and they may have been careless who they are saying yes to. Dig a little deeper to see what the new person’s interests are; books, archaeology? If not, why do they want to be friends? Scammers often don’t populate their profile in depth or use much imagination. The profile picture will date from a few days ago and most of the visible photos are very recent or went up on the same day. I’m often approached by attractive professional American women, whereas my female friends are targeted by men claiming to be ex-military. Give away details in one US New York white woman’s profile was that her language was ‘Black British’. Another listed Lagos as their favourite city, and one from LA liked ‘Funny Nigerian Videos.’
New Followers. If you have a public Instagram or Facebook page such as my own Jason Monaghan Author you have little initial control over who follows you. The warning signs are again those attractive women/ hunky men who on the face of it have little interest in novel writing. On Instagram they will have made very few posts, and these are generally just snaps of a woman posing, but they will be ‘following’ hundreds if not thousands of accounts. Often they will have a name such as Roberta048, as they know they will be blocked at some point and they can re-appear as Roberta049, or indeed as Phillipa048. I’ve had two approaches from scammers on the same day using the same pirated photograph under different names. For some reason I’ve recently gained a new follower a day on Bookbub, all with private profiles, no photo and names such as Tom_Smith125. Wannabe Instagram contacts can be obvious Only Fans strippers or people not disguising they are flogging bitcoin, but others could be setting a deeper trap. There is a function on Instagram where you can clean followers off without them knowing. It is worth checking sometimes who their friends and followers are – if a young woman’s list is principally a selection of men of a variety of ages and ethnicities smell a rat.
The Instant Approach. You’ve accepted a friend request or you’ve done a ‘follow back’ on Instagram or Twitter as the marketeers advise you to do. Pretty soon afterwards you receive a message along the lines of ‘Hi, how are you today?’ Delete it, block them, report them. A genuine approach will introduce themselves and start talking about writing. I had a contact recently who worked quite hard, claiming to be a wig-seller from Telford, not unfeasibly attractive and ‘she’ was responding directly from a conversation on a historical crime author’s page. I spun out some line as I was travelling and they said they had gone to the USA for a family funeral, and the time zone lag tallied. After three days I asked ‘who’s your favourite author?’ The reply ‘Steve Harvey’ came back an hour later ; a very unlikely answer from a white, female, British, crime novel fan. Even legitimate-sounding approaches can signpost danger, such as the one this week asking what the inspiration for my book was, cut-and-pasting the headline of the five book box set offer without twigging it was five books or even taking a moment to read the blurb.
The unexpected WhatsApp. Nobody should contact you directly on WhatsApp who isn’t one of your regular contacts. I’ve had what look essentially like wrong numbers, a sherd of a conversation like ‘where were you last night, I missed you.’ Do not engage; block and delete.
The corporate text. This is the one that nearly caught me out, as I was about to go away and was clearing all the ‘must do’ out of my various inboxes. Such a message will want you to follow a link or visit a website at which point you’ll start to be asked for information. The scammer may not know you bank with Santander or BT is your phone company but if they ping enough people, somebody will fall for it. And I responded to a message saying my loyalty points were about to expire, went through to a shiny website and only becoming suspicious when asked to pay £1 to buy the item with my points. I checked with the organisation in question and after some ferreting on their website discovered they had no loyalty scheme. The tell-tale sign is that the text will come from a mobile phone. Check that number before responding, and check the official website rather than follow the link offered. I have seen some very good clones of real bank and utility websites, so extra care is needed with the links you choose to follow.
The almost-legitimate email. We’ve all been used to being bombarded with spam and phishing emails from Russian brides, fake lotteries and exiled princes since the 1990s, so should be alert. But crooks are crooks and will find new ways of getting at us. After requesting information on a screenwriting course advertised on Facebook I was deluged by ‘invoices’ or ‘welcome messages’ from a variety of people I’d never heard of. Again, these would probably have led down a nasty rabbit hole and my spam filter caught most of them. One way to check legitimacy is to let your mouse hover over the ‘from’ line; if the email purports to be from Janet Smith but the ‘from’ address is Doug482@hotmail, smell a very big rat. The badly written email or impersonal greeting is also a giveaway but crooks can cut-and-paste corporate headers and footers including the anti-fraud warning! One device used by cloned websites is to change just one letter, so Barcleys.com rather than Barclays.com in 8 point type. In your hurry to clear that inbox you may not notice.
Do they exist? Periodically I receive information requests from journalists or media, and if I don’t know them I check them out first. Most bona fide media people have decent online profiles. I also receive offers from a variety of writing coaches, editors, cover designers and marketeers, including after I’ve posted on LinkedIn. If legitimate they should have a website, their own social media pages and probably a phone number or physical street address. Often they fall at the first hurdle – even if not scammers they are clearly no good at promotion!
Urgency is a trigger warning. Your PC warranty is about to expire, the invoice is about to incur penalty charges, that 50% off book promotion deal ends tonight and so on. Crooks also know that you may be feeling hassled or chilled out just before the weekend or a bank holiday and in wanting the clear the decks hurriedly will be less vigilant.
Phone scams. Every call to my landline is a scam, as nobody else uses it. I also never engage with any cold-callers on my mobile. Phone scams are widespread but as writers we are not especially vulnerable unless you are giving out your phone number on your website .
So there we have a brief glimpse at some threats we face, and the list is by no means comprehensive. However, I hope the above will give you added confidence and help you keep safe online. And I’ve no doubt that the bots from the Axis of Evil that follow this blog will be reading it too.
I’d be interested to hear of any other methods scammers are using to target writers, and I hope these warnings do not deter you from signing up to Tales of Mystery and Excavation.
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