Firstbeat Technologies Oy, 19.12.2018
Please be on the lookout for fraudulent emails sent by criminals targeting internationally operating companies.
A handful of Firstbeat partners have reported receiving fraudulent emails designed to appear as if they had been sent by Firstbeat. These emails utilized Firstbeat employee information and attempted to perpetrate various financial scams.
In one such attempt, the recipient was asked to reply to Firstbeat urgently, and was then asked to assist with the execution of a money transfer. The reply address, however, was not to Firstbeat but went instead to the scammer’s Gmail address. “Sender” information was technically manipulated to look like it came from a real Firstbeat address.
The scammer incorporated Firstbeat contact information in the mail text body, and if the partner replied to the gmail address, the scammer replied with another fraudulent email.
Here is an example from one of these exchanges to aid in your recognition:
“Nice to receive your response. We are acquiring a Bio-science machine from China and we need a Representative that can handle it from outside Finland. We solicit your assistance due to the fact that we have exhausted our import quota for products from China and the new unfavorable monetary policy which makes money transfer take longer to process from Finland.
It will be easier and quicker if we can get a Representative to handle it from outside Finland and since you are one of our distributors we thought it wise to contact you to be part of this new project.
Kindly let me know if you can handle it so I can send you the details.”
None of these emails were sent from Firstbeat mailboxes, all of which are protected using strong authentication. Also, note we only use our own domain (firstbeat.fi or firstbeat.com) as sender and reply addresses.
The reported emails were likely sent using publicly available information, as can be found on our own website. (https://www.firstbeat.com/en/contact/find-provider/) along with contact information of key Firstbeat employees, which is made available to facilitate new customer inquiries.
Firstbeat is not in any way associated with these kind of fraudulent activities.
If you suspect you have received a scam email or have been the subject of a phishing attempt, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Fraudulent emails can be deleted or you may forward them to us, and/or relevant law enforcement authorities.
Contact us with any questions: support@firstbeat.com
Firstbeat Support and Firstbeat Information Security