Impersonators are targeted at companies with Fake Techcrunch Outreach

Hi, thank you as always for reading Techcrunch. We will quickly talk to you about something important.

We have discovered that scammers mimic TechCrunch -journalists and event leaders and reach out to businesses, pretending to be our staff when they are definitely not. These bad actors use our name and reputation to try to dust unsuspecting businesses. It makes us crazy and annoys us on your behalf.

Anecdotally, this doesn’t just happen to us; Scammers take advantage of the confidence that comes with established news brands to get their foot in the door with businesses across the media industry.

Here is an example of the most common schedule we have tracked: Impostors that imitate our journalists to extract sensitive business information from unsuspecting goals. In several cases we know of, scammers have adopted the identity of actual employees, creating what looks like a standard media study on a company’s products and requests an initial call.

Sharp-owned recipients sometimes capture inconsistencies in email addresses that do not match our real employee’s credentials. But these schemes develop rapidly; Bad actors continue to refine their tactics, mimic journalists’ writing styles, and refer to starting trends to make their seats increasingly convincingly. Equally worrying: Victims who agree that telephone interviews tell us that scammers use these calls to dig for even more proprietary details.

Why do they do this? We don’t know, even if a reasonable guess is that these are groups looking for initial access to a network.

As for what to do about it, if someone reaches out and claims to be from Techcrunch, and you even have the slightest doubt as to whether they are legitimate, don’t just take their words for it. We’ve made it easy for you to verify.

Start by checking our staff page. It’s the fastest way to see if the person who contacts actually works here. If the individual’s name is not on our list, you have your answer right there.

If you see someone’s name on our staff page but our employee’s job description is not square with the request you receive (ie a Techcrunch Copy Editor is suddenly very interested in learning about your business!), A bad actor is trying to con you.

If it sounds like a legitimate request, but you will do it double secure, you must also be free to contact us directly and just ask (you can learn to reach each author, editor, sales manager, marketing guru and event team member of our BIOS).

We know it’s frustrating to have to double -check media surveys, but these groups expect you to not take the extra step. By paying attention to verification, you do not just protect your own company – you help maintain the confidence that legitimate journalists depend on doing their jobs.

Thanks.