Conference invitation scams are those that involve a scammer sending invitations out to events with the intention of scamming the invitees. These might be real events or fake events, and the scammers target people including business professionals, lecturers, CEOs, researchers, philanthropists, and more. The goal here is to steal the identities of these people, and eventually get money by taking advantage of their victims.

Spotting a Scam

Thereare usually some pretty clear signs that you could be dealing with a scaminvolving a conference invitation. Here are some things to look for:

• Theinvitation has typos or bad grammar
• Theinvitation seems very random or out of no where
• Theconference name sounds like a conference you might be family with, such as TechCrunch, but it’s spelled differently, like TekCrunch
• Theinvitation asks that you pay a premium price to attend, which includesaccommodation and transportation
• Paymentoptions don’t include credit cards
• Theinvitation is overly flattering
• Thereis a sense of urgency pushing you to send personal information
• Thegreeting on the invitation is questionable, i.e. “Salutations.”
• Theinvitation asks for sensitive information in return for “covering” yourconference cost, accommodations, and transportation.
• Theconference is held in a different country, i.e. Asia or the Middle East
• Thelanding page doesn’t have a physical address or landline number
• Theinvitation sounds too good to be true

How Do These Scams Work?

Ingeneral, the scammer begins the scam by sending an email to a target victim andinvited them to attend or speak at a conference. The scammer usually uses thevictim’s social media pages to get information about them, which helps them tocreate a more personalized email.

Thevictim is told to register for the conference, which involves giving personalinformation. Additionally, they could be asked to pay a fee to attend, whichcould be over $1,000, depending on how long the conference is said to last. Usually,this is where the sense of urgency comes into play, as the scammer will say theconference is filling up or they need to know if they can count on the victimto speak. If not, of course, they must find another speaker, so the victim mustconfirm as soon as possible.

Ifthe targeted victim complies with this and sends their information, the scammermay have enough information to steal the victim’s identity. Additionally, thescammer can use the name of the victim to promote the conference, especially ifit is someone well-known in the industry.

Ifthe victim goes through with all of this, they will quickly find out that theyhave been scammed. A scammer might also try scamming people who are actuallygoing to a legitimate conference. They claim that they are part of theorganization running the conference, and they need information and to collectfees. Of course, since the victim already signed up for the conference, it iseasy to believe this scam without giving it a second thought.

Protecting Yourself fromInvitation Scams

Hereare some tips and tricks that you can use to protect yourself from these typesof scams:

• Ifyou get an email similar to ones described here, don’t respond.
• Youshould investigate any invitation that you are not sure of.
• Donot agree to send money, and only pay with a credit card.
• Don’tagree to give any personal information; a conference organizer doesn’t need toknow your Social Security Number
• Researchthe event and try to match up the information that you were given in theinvitation email.
• Copyand paste some of the email into Google to see if others have reported thatthis is a scam.

What to Do if You are a Victim If you have become a victim of a conference invitation scam, there are steps you should take immediately. First, get in touch with your financial institutions, like banks and credit card companies, and make them aware of this. Next, you should contact the location police and authorities in the area where the conference is allegedly supposed to be held. You should also get in touch with the Better Business Bureau about the company, and you can report the scam online via the BBB’s Scam Tracker or the Federal Trade Commission’s Online Complaint Assistant.  Finally, you can also report the scam to the FBI through its Internet Crime Complaint Center.

Robert Siciliano personal security and identity theft expert and speaker is the author of Identity Theft Privacy: Security Protection and Fraud Prevention: Your Guide to Protecting Yourself from Identity Theft and Computer Fraud. See him knock’em dead in this Security Awareness Training video.