CAPE CORAL, Fla. — “This is not the first one, she just happened to get caught”, said Lee Noriega, CEO of Inceptus LLC.
That’s what this cyber security expert had to say about this woman 20 year Titayana Vega. She's been sentenced to 15 years in prison for stealing from her victims. Investigators say Vega and her co defendants posted fake ads featuring alluring women online, luring victims into giving their addresses, and then robbing them. Lee Noriega says there's a name for this kind of crime.
“We call this social engineering. I call this the 21st century con game. It’s a way of getting people to give you money or give you information in order to exploit that”, said Noriega.
He says your first step to keep yourself from falling for the trap, is to make sure no one can find out too much about you online.
“If you’re using Facebook or Twitter look at your privacy settings to see what amount of information is being given about you, that people can use against you”
Vega used pictures of attractive women as the bait. Lee says if someone sends you a picture that catches your eye, you can and should check to see if it's legit before you respond
“You can actually run that picture through google search engines to see is it used somewhere else or is it somebody else’s picture. It will take that picture and match it against millions and millions of other pictures to make sure it is correct,” said Noriega.
He reminds you replying to emails or calls with attractive pictures, but from unknown sources, can mean your info might be used against you. While it may seem harmless to chat or respond, the right response is no response slash delete!
“It’s just taking those protections to not engage in those type of conversations because it is a risky conversation to have with people even on the onset”, said Noriega.
