MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WMBF) The local Better Business Bureau (BBB) office is fielding dozens of calls from locals, after receiving an email from the agency about a supposed customer complaint. It turns out, those emails weren’t coming from BBB officials.
Instead, these emails are coming form an outside source. The national BBB office recently issued an alert cautioning businesses and consumers about an email that looks like it is from BBB, with the subject line “Complaint from your customers.”
Inside the email, there’s a link where the recipient can view the complaint. However, clicking on this link opens an attachment carrying a virus. According to Kathy Graham, BBB Coastal Carolina President, if a computer is infected with this virus, it can ultimately give hackers to access to private information like passwords and sensitive account information.
According to that same memo, the fraudulent emails have been circulating throughout the county for a few months, but Graham recently saw a flood of these message come through locally. “We had a burst of phone calls last week. Every other phone call was someone saying we got this email,” said Graham.
The National BBB Council is working with the FBI and strong cyber security companies to put a stop to these messages.
Graham says there are certain things recipients should look out for if an email looks suspicious. A couple of things that should stand out are misspelled words or use of improper grammar. Anyone with a suspicious BBB email in their inbox should contact the local BBB office, and more importantly, Grahams says one should not click on the link until the email has been verified as a legitimate email.
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