The most popular tactic of scammers is social engineering, especially phishing. It involves posing as a familiar person, site, or organization to distract you and steal information, he writes. 24 Channels.

For example, you may receive a message on social networks with an offer and a link to follow. But when you click, you are redirected to a fake website that copies the design of the real resource and requires you to enter your username, password or financial information. For example, it could be a copy of a bank website or payment system. Of course, all data is instantly transmitted to scammers, and they immediately take advantage of this by hacking your pages or stealing money from your accounts.

Since the skills of fraudsters in this regard are constantly increasing, you should not forget the security rules on the Internet and know what schemes criminals work according to. Here are the most popular methods.

Impersonating someone you know

In most cases, unknown individuals impersonate their friends or relatives. This happens in two ways: By hacking their pages and by creating an identical copy of their pages.

• In the first case, the fraudster writes to you on behalf of the account owner, whose account he hacked and found your communication. Then he asks for money, for example – top up money to the account, transfer a few thousand to the card, etc. Of course, a promise is immediately made that everything will be returned by the evening, tomorrow or by the weekend, but in fact no one will return the money. You may also be asked to vote in a contest for a child’s drawing or song, but the link provided will ask you to enter your personal information, username and password.
• In the second case, all information is copied from the page of one of your acquaintances: photo, description, various profile data, and sometimes even posts. This way, the new fake page looks like the real page; Even the address may be similar, differing by only one character. Once the profile is ready, a friend or follow request will be sent to you. You will then likely receive a message with the same request asking you to disclose personal information, follow a link, or send money.

If you’ve received a similar suspicious message from a friend or family member, Try contacting them directly by other means. For example, write to messenger, another social network, call, etc. There is a high probability that it will turn out that it is not them.

It also works in the other direction: they can copy you. Are there any protections against this? No instead of yes. The best solution would be to keep social networks as closed to outsiders as possible, but not everyone is ready for this. On the contrary, many people prefer to be open to outside audiences. So here it all depends on the attention of your friends: whether they will believe the scammer’s scam when they see a copy of your page.

For your part, you should be careful as the information you share on your public profile could be used to appear more credible by pretending to be you.

Your voice is being transcribed

There are artificial intelligence systems today Just a few seconds of a real person’s voice is enough to copy it and create new expressions. If you post a video on the Internet, scammers can steal your voice and call, for example, one of your relatives who indicated their phone number on their page in social networks. This way, “your” voice can tell you that you are in trouble and need money urgently.

Your parents may fall into this trap and forget all the warnings about the scam and immediately rush to transfer money to the scammers, thinking it’s you. At this moment you yourself will not even suspect everything that is happening.

In cases like these, it’s always a good idea to call the person in question or contact them through other means to verify whether something actually happened.

Fake sweepstakes and promotions

Everyone loves freebies and scammers know this. They create persuasive ads to attract their victims and convince them to click on a banner, link, or fill out a form to receive a reward. It’s an easy way to capitalize on people’s love of excitement and rewards.

Before participating in any offer, you should learn how to spot fake ads on social media. You will be able to tell instantly when you see some signs of fake messages. As a rule these too good to be truethey are so intrusive, they are bright, they shine with annoying animations, they literally promise such riches.

It is a clear sign that such announcements are made frequently. unverified accounts or newly created pagesand have bad grammar.

It is also worth checking the comment sections of such ads: they are often full of negative comments and warnings from other users. But reviews are not always a guarantee; scammers often purge negative comments and replace them with fake posts created by bots.

fake job offers

It seems that every Ukrainian has already received an SMS with the text “I am from TikTok’s HR department.” This is one of the manifestations of this method that wants to steal your data.

If you are looking for a job and post about it on social media, scammers can take advantage of this, including sending you private messages. Or you might even come across an ad somewhere in your news feed about a tempting job offer promising lots of money and little employment. You can be tempted by this offer by following the link. There they promise to show you detailed conditions, tell about the advantages of the vacancy and other things in a document in Google Docs. But instead, you’ll see a Google login page that looks completely real and requires a username and password to read.

If you already have a Google account and are signed in to your browser, this will alert you. The browser remembers the login information and should not require re-authorization. Do not enter any data on such pages, because scammers will immediately get this information.

Romance scams

Romance fraud is usually a long-term operation. The scammer creates a fake social media profile and enters into a romantic relationship with the victim. He also supposedly lives far, far away, so he can’t be coming any time soon. Having gained complete trust during long-term communication, the fraudster suddenly begins to ask for money for various incomprehensible expenses or, finally, to come to your home. Know that he has many people like you.

The victim begins paying for food, rent, travel and medical bills. The scammer may even get the victim to provide financial information, such as credit card information, so he can spend the money himself.

Often such people The victim’s profile is subjected to preliminary analysisLearning about his/her tastes, preferences, habits and other details makes it easier to gain trust and communicate. After all, you are more likely to “peck” and like a person with whom you have similar tastes or common life goals, for example in music. All this can be learned from posts on social networks, especially today, when artificial intelligence allows you to analyze large amounts of information in seconds.

You should not blindly trust everything on the Internet, especially if they confess their love to you on the third day and very quickly touch the financial side of your life. While it’s not a guarantee, meeting such a person in person generally reduces your chances of encountering a scammer.

Surveys and tests

What’s wrong with taking a quick survey or quiz on social media for a gift card? If these are from a legitimate or verified account or page, there is nothing to worry about. But if not, there may be scammers trying to steal your information for later use or redirect you to a phishing site.

Signs that it’s a scam are often the same as fake winnings (like incredibly good offers).

Only take quizzes and surveys that request personal information from a trusted source. Also, if you believe this is a scam, always warn others by leaving a negative review.

Cryptocurrency and other investment scams

Financial scammers may trap you by claiming that a person earns thousands of dollars a week by trading cryptocurrency or uses some special scheme invented by the author that is not available to anyone else.

Low-risk, high-return investments are often scams. If you research the types of investments these scammers promote, such as cryptocurrencies or forex, you will realize that these are not things that can make someone rich overnight.

Results

It is important to remember that almost any information you leave behind can be turned into a weapon in skilled hands. In fact, few people can refuse to use social networks, but in this case it is worth remembering to be careful: do not leave important personal data in the public domain, always check the information, do not be fooled by sweet promises.