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Insidious Online Scams: How to Protect Yourself from Fake Trading, Romance Scams, Sextortion, and More

From “Fake insider trading” to “Sextortion”, these are always so-called transversal phenomena: they affect every age group and do not look directly at gender, income or level of education. Tiziana Liguori, Milanese manager of the Operations Center for Cyber ​​Security – Postal Police of Milan, explains which are the most insidious online scams and how to defend yourself.

Fake trading on line

“It is a rapidly growing phenomenon – explains the manager al Giornale.it – which also concerns very important figures, which even reach one million euros, and which affects everyone, from the banker to the pensioner. Just this morning the complaint came from an entrepreneur who lost 500 thousand euros. This is how it works: advertising banners appear on the web inviting you to make investments that will yield significant sums. Once clicked, the user is invited to enter their data. You are then contacted on the phone from a number that appears to be that of your bank by an operator who explains how to “triple” your initial investment. But the calls arrive via VoIP channel and are managed through foreign companies, often located in Albania. In a similar way they happen smishing e phishing, depending on whether the first contact is via sms or email. When faced with a non-IT savvy ‘victim’, they invite her to share the screen. In this way they manage to enter the computer of the person they are trying to scam, accessing her data. They are very skilled, they often succeed. The problem is that the initial capital paid by the victim is often converted into cryptocurrencies that end up abroad”.

Romance scams

“We are literally invaded – underlines Liguori again – by people who come to our offices to report that they have suffered love scams via social networks. Here the deception takes place through fake profiles on traditional social networks: the scammers steal the victim’s trust by accessing their data precisely on Facebook or Instagram and take advantage of the fragility by having even important sums paid in the name of alleged romantic relationships.They are the most painful cases, often the victims cannot understand that the person with whom they had established a relationship was actually a ‘fake’ “Sometimes they leave and come back to our offices after six months, more desperate than before. This phenomenon primarily affects women, from all walks of life.”

Sextortion

“Here the scam starts with an exchange of videos or photos of a consensual sexual nature. Too bad that at a certain point the victim is threatened: either you pay or I send the video to relatives, friends, employers. Here we are faced with real extortion and the virtual places where it takes place are the social networks. In this case there are more male victims: there are also professionals, including upper-class and highly educated people, and even very young people”.

The “Man in the middle” attacks

“This is a rarer phenomenon – Liguori always explains – and it happens when the victim receives an email from a fake sender who pretends to be the company to which he sent periodic transfers. In the email he often communicates that he has changed the Iban, so the victim is led to modify the data of the current account to which he sent the money. In essence, the hacker stands between two entities (precisely ‘Man in the middle’) by manipulating communications. Here, unfortunately, we realize the scam only when the real creditor shows up to say he hasn’t received the bank transfer. The scams in these cases also reach substantial figures, we have had cases from 800 thousand euros up to 4 million euros”.

How to defend yourself

The manager then explains how to defend yourself against scams that have become increasingly insidious. “We must take all possible precautions, first of all that of requesting a meeting in person which is an excellent way to verify if we are dealing with a fictitious identity. The other advice is to always contact your bank to request information compared to investments. Basically: never trust a simple phone call, because money – as is also told in fairy tales – does not grow on trees”.

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