Don’t get fooled!
One of the great advantages of subscription software is that the licensing is easier to verify. The days of people copying license codes are over. That makes this scam even more interesting, simply because the product they refer to is subscription licensed through the cloud.
The scam was targeted at one of our clients, who are based in Christchurch, and they shared this story a few days ago.
“I was targeted via email by someone with address domain [email protected], subject line “Legalize and Protect”
They were impersonating a representative of BSA The Software Alliance (a real organisation) including the logos and signature line.
They suggested that we were running afoul of software licensing agreements and name dropped Adobe, and suggested that they would need to audit our licensing.”
It’s a scam. A real such situation would be initiated by a chartered accountant on behalf of bsa.org (not bsassi.org).
I figured this out after a few hours of worry (we have nothing to fear, all our licenses are procured from authorised vendors and are up-to-date). I ignored the emails, but they kept coming and on Monday they tried calling me. I told them to contact our lawyer and that’s the last I’ve heard from them 😊
I reported the scam to CERT NZ. “
The scammers are persistent. They are bold and shameless. They trade on creating urgency, confusion and stress. They take advantage of our desire to do the right thing, and that’s not all they will take advantage of, if you let them.
Oh, the BSA itself is real – and we support their work to ensure software use is legal – Stop Infringement. End-User Legal Enforcement You Can Trust. (bsacompliancesolutions.org)