Scammers are masters at fooling you and it is not always easy to recognise a scam. Scammers often appeal to a sense of rush and your emotions. This top offer is available for a limited time, this invoice must be paid immediately or a surprising, good or bad, event has occurred that suddenly requires money.
Unfortunately, scams are common and more appear all the time. However, you can learn to recognise them. Follow the news, ask your friends or an expert and talk about scam messages with your close relatives. Or, learn the basics of how to protect yourself against online scams on this web page. In this section, we will discuss different online scams, as well as how to avoid becoming the victim of a cyber scam.
Phishing
Did you receive a suspicious text message, email or phone call? With phishing, criminals try to acquire e.g. usernames, passwords, online banking credentials and credit card information.
Do you suspect a romance scam?
Romance scams take advantage of people's fundamental feelings and needs, such as yearning for love and intimacy, or loneliness. Scams are often systematic and skilfully executed. That is why falling for them is human.
Scammers use false identities, and pretend to be looking for a companion or partner, as do real people. You should be careful if a person you recently met online asks you for money with any excuse.
If you suspect your close relative or loved one is being scammed, talk about it. There are a lot of online stories of romance scam victims, and the cases often follow the same pattern. Seek information together and go through other people's stories. They may have familiar features that help a victim recognize that he or she is the target of a scam.
CEO scam
In this type of scam, the employee receives a message that is supposedly from the CEO. For example, the message orders to pay an urgent bill or to buy gift cards. The scammer pleads that they can't handle it themselves right now. If the scam is successful, in reality the employee is transferring the money to the scammer’s account.
Such scam messages can especially target those employees who handle billing, salaries, or HR issues. They are of especial interest to criminals.
False search engine results
Victims are also lured to scam websites via links among search engine results. For example, when you search for a bicycle shop with a search engine, the top search result could be "Best Cycle Shop", which in turn could not be a real online shop. If you click the result, you can end up on a scam site.
For this reason, you should not go to sites through search results, but rather by entering the address of the site directly in the address bar.
The name of this phenomenon is malvertising. In a scam like that, criminals buy a spot for their site at the top of the search results. For example, a person searching for the pages of a bank or online store may inadvertently select a fake ad or search result that criminals have paid for to appear using misleading tactics.
Video forgery and AI scams (deepfakes)
AI can be used to combine audio, video, text or images into video forgeries (deepfakes). In them, real people are made into credible virtual copies. Such techniques are utilized for scams and information influencing. For example, a video of one person can be credibly edited to have someone else's face. A person's voice can also be faked so that it seems genuine and used deliberately in a misleading manner. In a video like this, it may seem like a person is talking about things that he or she has never really said.
10 tips for the safer use of online services
- Do not click the links in messages if you are not completely sure that the message is genuine and the sender is trustworthy. For example, type your bank’s URL in the address bar of the browser yourself or use your own bookmarks.
- Prefer official bank mobile apps. The same is true for online shops.
- Do not give your online banking credentials to others. Remember that your bank or authorities will never ask for your bank credentials in a phone conversation, text message, or e-mail.
- Install apps only from trusted app stores. Do not install anything because someone is putting pressure on you, e.g. on the phone.
- Enable multi-factor authentication whenever possible.
- Keep your devices and programs updated. On many devices, you can choose to have updates download automatically.
- Use antivirus software.
- Use strong passwords or preferably, use a password manager.
- You are not alone! Anyone can become the victim or a scam, and you don’t need to feel ashamed. By sharing your experience you can help others. You can also contact the authorities or your bank if necessary.
- Make backups of important data on a regular basis.