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Hit Search Limited warns : Internet laziness could lead to identity fraud

By Andrew Redfern @ 10th October 2008 1:18 pm

As a Search Engine Optimisation company naturally we put some of our efforts into optimising our site and getting it further up the Google rankings.

As a consequence of this we appear on a whole variety of terms. The internet is a constantly evolving medium with huge brands becoming household names. We aim to cover each and every one of them in order to offer as wide a spectrum of web marketing expertise as possible.

It is not uncommon for one of our SEO staff here at Hit Search Liverpool to take a call from an AOL user needing technical advice. They search on “AOL Telephone number” and because there is no call centre number immediately available they look further down the listings. Our internet news feed has always been a very popular facililty and so our content, along with the fact that the site is naturally very Google friendly means we pop up fairly prominently.

If the hapless AOL user had happened to dial a less scrupulous random number a username and password could be extracted almost immediately. It’s a worry because it highlights how a well optimised site and a cunning criminal could set traps for internet users with hardly any effort whatsoever.

It isn’t just with internet brands we see this happening, we’ve received numerous calls from people thinking they are calling Amazon, Continental Airlines, Play.com. All e-commerce businesses. Users would naturally be calling to chase up orders and confirm credit card payments. They might end up losing a lot more than the email login. It would be so easy to set up a telephone number, optimise a website and have it contain well known banks and e-commerce sites. As long as their number is visible in the Google results snippet a percentage of the people seeing it will dial it and fall right into the criminal’s trap.

Our advice. Don’t be lazy or gung-ho. Take a bit of time & care when looking at the search engine results. Just because you’ve typed “Natwest Telephone Number” doesn’t mean that every telephone number you see in the listings will be Natwest. This really does sound like basic stuff but it really is staggering the amount of people who dial the first number they see regardless of what it is. As long as you get through to Hit Search’s Customer Service staff or our PPC department it’s not a problem but what if it’s something less benign?

The internet is alive with fraudsters, some unsubtle spamming techniques we laugh at, some we won’t see coming until it’s too late…especially the ones where it’s us who’s walking willingly into the trap. If you are calling them then phishing is so much easier for them. Identity theft is never far from the news these days, don’t make it easy for them.

Would you like to know more about Google search engine listings? If so, contact Hit Search, SEO and Google adWords qualified PPC specialists, on 0845 643 9289. Remember, its a big world out there, make sure you become visible.

Post Script : Our Google Analytics staff have just told me that the first person to arrive at this article via an internet search found it using the term “Expedia Telephone Number”. Let’s be careful out there people.

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