BEWARE, Christmas Is Coming

 BEWARE, Christmas Is Coming

What an irony indeed.  What can explain us titling today's "BEWARE" piece when in fact Christmas is coming?  With Christmas just around the corner,  I just thought I'll borrow some of these relevant posters from my banker as it issues out alerts to the majority of the unsuspecting customer base.  As much as it is the festive season, this is when scammers and fraudsters will ramp up and go full throttle because by now, most of us are overwhelmed with all the goings-on all over the place while our wallets have slightly got fatter [albeit in fleeting ways though].

Sadly, there are isolated segments across our global village wherein their intent is more evil than the normal evil we have come to know in the past  From last week's news, a bank Chinese bank depositor filed a legal complaint against her banker because although she is NOT using online banking at all, her bank record details show that one million pesos was gobbled up from her account balance.  To think that most of us worked hard [with all the sweat and sacrifices] to come up with those savings.

Not to dampen the spirit of this Christmas Season, let us continue to be VIGILANT.  How can we be VIGILANT?  By being constantly CAUTIOUS without being CYNICAL, we need to PAUSE before hitting the CLICK button whenever various electronic alerts will prompt us.  The harsh reality here is that these scammers and fraudsters are MANY STEPS ahead of us when it comes to their tricks up in their sleeves.  And they're damn smarter than us when it pertains to their 'DIRTY TRICKS'.  WHEN they send an SMS alert to ostensibly warn you that there is a potential breach to your account.  WHEN they purportedly alert you that there was a failed attempt to breach your account but which they thwarted.

How do we counter EVIL INTENT?  Tough nut to crack, dude.  Many times, cataclysmic events did happen and when it happens, the best we can eevr do is to CONTAIN it.  But that's NOT enough though.  Pre-emptive measures are necessary to shield us from all these EVIL INTENT.  WHEN one receives an ALERT call from an anonymous party, be suspecting.  WHEN one receives an SMS alert, be suspicious.  WHEN one gets lured to some 'GOOD NEWS' but such requires you to 'CLICK A LINK' to proceed, FORGET IT !

Thing is, when we are into a situation, we must be able to CALL A SPADE A SPADE.  There should be NO room for interpretation or worst, speculative ways to assess the validity of a message alert.  Going back to this Festive Season of the upcoming Christmas, let us be constantly on the SAFE side of things.  Risks will popped up LEFT and RIGHT.  And we can't obliterate those risks because they are very much part of the landscape we live in.  What is expected from us is to MITIGATE RISKS but that's not too much to ask from us📌📌📌