How To Protect Yourself From Payroll Scams
Around $5 Million in total are lost to fraudulent payroll operations every year. In spite of many SNS professional accounts spreading awareness, such scams keep rising. Since 2018, these types of scams have been on a rapid rise. The reason behind this is businesses and individuals not being aware of the ways to protect themselves from such practices. This is because the scammers use spoof emails to run this fraud. How they gain access to those emails? It’s a whole different story.
The Process Of A Payroll Scam
Many small and growing businesses rely on various payroll softwares for handling their employee data. Sometimes, they may come across some issues that are out of their reach. So, they seek help from organizations that provide such services. While there are some companies that really provide legitimate payroll services, some use these services as a cover and also as a gateway for their scam.
When you contact one of these scams, they will offer you their services and in order for them to provide said services, you’ll have to share the credentials of your payroll software account. This means that they’ll have access to all the information in that account. This includes employee names, email IDs, salaries, account numbers, etc. They may also offer to integrate their software with the software you use. This makes getting the information a lot easier for them.
After this, they spoof the email IDs of the employees and send fake emails to the owner of the organization requesting to change their bank account details in the payroll system. In most cases, the owner will change the details as per the request thinking that it’s sent by the employee. This error is mostly detected after two or three months of the employee not receiving his/her salary.
In this way, many scam operations make you pay for the cover-up services and then steal your employees’ salaries, earning more than you know from your company. And even if they are detected, there’s no way to prove that they were the ones scamming you.
The Ways To Prevent Such Scams From Happening
Now that you know how this scam takes place, let’s take a look at the ways to prevent it from happening to you. Taking the right precautions ensures that you don’t have to pay more than you need to and also, your employees’ hard-earned money will remain safe.
Official Support
It is recommended to always contact the official support line of the payroll software that you are using. Doing this will ensure the safety of your company’s and employees’ data. Just make sure the company is trustworthy and legitimate.
Verification
Whenever you receive an email from an employee request any kind of changes in account details, verify with him/her of they have actually sent the email or not. Take the requested action only if he/she confirms that the email was sent by them.
Research
If in case there is a need to include a third party for payroll support, make sure they are legitimate and that there are no fraud reports against them on the internet. Only give them access if you trust them with the data.
Conclusion
Preventing such payroll scams is completely in our hands. We can even spread awareness about such practices via SNS (Social Networking Services). Many SNS professional accounts help in creating a safe digital environment by spreading awareness about such fraudulent practices. These SNS professional accounts include the accounts of name influencers, celebrities, etc. Let’s join hands with these SNS professional accounts, bee smart, and prevent these scams from happening.