The Federal Bureau of Investigation has provided a Public Service Announcement that the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center website has been spoofed by scammers. Security Savings Bank Vice President Dorothy Ricketts advises caution when using this site, as well as taking precautions when searching any website:
“If you have an issue with internet activity that you know there has been fraud, you have gotten some fraudulent emails or clicked on a bad link, you can actually go to this site to report that. Many people don’t have it memorized, so they Google it. You have to be very cautious when you Google to get information and so the spoofed website may pop up first and you may go there and because you think you are entering information to a government website, you are willing to give the information. The website is actually ic3.gov,” states Ricketts.
“Be very, very cautious. I always caution customers to not necessarily take the first website that pops up. Google has a little symbol by it that says ‘sponsored’ and you don’t always necessarily want to take those. I always recommend people to take time to look at each of the websites, maybe look at the actual web addresses,” Ricketts informs.
