Fraud, Ukraine | Warns against Ukraine scammers:

The security company Check Point Software, is closely monitoring the situation in Ukraine and is now reporting that a trend of donation fraud is on the way, as a result of the conflict in Ukraine.

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Ask people to be careful

Many donations have been made to support Ukraine. Most donations have a good purpose and a goal to support Ukraine and people in war, yet there are some who manage to take advantage of the situation.

– There are hackers out there who are now exploiting people’s willingness to donate, so we encourage everyone to be extra careful if they want to donate to Ukraine. Always double-check the email address of the sender. Check for misspellings in emails. And check if the email sender is authentic, says Lotem Finkelstein, head of threat intelligence at Check Point Software.

Check Point Software’s research team, Check Point Research (CPR), has also uncovered a series of malicious emails trying to exploit the situation to make a financial profit, enticing recipients to donate money to fake Ukrainian support funds.

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Be on trend

Nordea fraud expert Ida Marie Edholm, like Check Point, encourages people to be careful.

– We have seen an increase in the number of fraud cases of almost 50 percent in 2021 compared to 2020 and more recently. Often it is professional actors abroad who are behind it. They are getting better and better at imitating websites and getting inquiries to look real, at the same time they also use today’s news image, she says to Nettavisen.

This is a common tactic for many scammers around the world, but not so widespread in Norway yet, Edholm gives examples from the neighboring country.

– In Sweden, a fake Facebook profile was created for the artist Peter Jöback where people were encouraged to donate money to him. On SVT I saw a case where they had come across a number of fake streams on Tiktok. These were filmed and pretended to be in Ukraine, so that people sent money to them, says Edholm

She says that in connection with Ukraine, it is fake donations they are most afraid of. They work purposefully towards this.

– We do several things, the most important thing we do is to obtain information about what is happening around us. It is also important that we get information out to customers that this is a risk. In addition to this, we work with other forms of preventive fraud work on various fronts, says Edholm.

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