From the publisher: Fraud is a real problem

At least once a week and sometimes more often than that I receive an email or a call from a reader telling me they need to update their credit card because it was stolen or hacked.

In 2024, the FBI received 859,532 reports from people who said they were victims of cybercrime. The real number of victims is certainly much larger. 

And probably everyone reading this column has received a suspicious phone call or opened a phishing email, in which criminals impersonate someone trustworthy to try to get you to open a computer virus or divulge sensitive information.

So fraud is something that affects us all, but people don’t often talk about it, perhaps because victims feel stigma about having been scammed. 

The lack of public awareness is something I hadn’t really thought about until Hometown Bank launched its first “Scouting for Fraud” community workshop last year. The goal of the event is to help people learn to recognize cyberattacks and avoid them. It makes sense that a bank would host this sort of event since many attacks are aimed at getting into your bank account and separating you from your money.

Hometown Bank is hosting this year’s fraud workshop from 1 to 5 p.m. on Friday, March 6, at the Ravenna Elks Club. Attendance is limited, so you need to register at https://www.ht.bank/fraudscout.

“Fraud education doesn’t need to be scary or technical to be effective,” said M. Scott Mikula, the bank’s chief operating officer. “This workshop focuses on real-world examples, practical tips, and giving people confidence. Our goal is to help attendees feel prepared — not overwhelmed.”

This event is interesting to me for another reason. Not many people know this about me, but I actually have another job. Back before I started The Portager, I began working on the marketing team of a Switzerland-based tech startup called Proton that offers secure email, calendar, cloud storage, password manager, AI assistant and other common apps. Proton Mail and its companion products like the Lumo AI assistant are designed to be more secure than Gmail or ChatGPT, mainly because they use stronger kinds of encryption.

If you don’t know much about tech, don’t worry. I won’t get into the details. But I mention this because it’s not often my two worlds — local news and online security — intersect. So when Hometown Bank let me know about this event, I decided to write a column to raise awareness about it and to share some resources from my other job.

On the marketing team at Proton, almost all we talk about to our community is how to stay safe online. On our blog you’ll see articles about how to prevent phishing attacks and how to shop online safely. We have a YouTube channel that posted a video this week about crazy scams. And in fact, just yesterday my team and I published original research about how one in four small businesses fell victim to a cyberattack last year. 

I’m very invested in this topic and I’ve been deeply involved in the global movement for better online privacy for nearly eight years. So if you have any questions about the subject, I’m always happy to help. You know where to reach me. As long as you don’t ask for my Social Security number, I’ll reply.