A few days ago, the National Police confirmed that he was investigating the complaint of a neighbor from Granada who claimed that some hackers had stolen 47,000 euros after seizing the data on his card. A case that highlights a new crime that expands through computer devices and mutates with different scenes. These are the seven most used modalities and with which they can pluck your checking account without you noticing, and some tips so you don't bite.
Phishing
The precursor of cyberstaffs. A classic that, like the tocomocho , continues to leave a trail of victims, despite the advice that the National Police has been doing for years. Its modus operandi is always the same: The bad ones make a massive sending of emails posing as a banking entity in which the recipient is informed that his current account has been suspended and is instructed to click a link to recover it. Subsequently, you are asked to enter your passwords, which the scammer does without realizing that at that precise moment you are revealing them to the criminals and providing them with access to their deposits so that they can devalue them.
Antonio Gómez, responsible inspector of the Cybercrime unit of the Province of Malaga Police Station, recalls that no banking entity asks its customers for passwords by email or messages to the mobile and offers easy advice to detect this fraud: "The email we receive does not it's corporate. "
CEO scam
So named because its first victims were senior managers , it is a crime in vogue that has recently mutated to a version for individuals: Email Account Compromise (EAL). One of its main characteristics is that those who perpetrate it are authentic organized groups and that the amount defrauded is usually very high.
Its staging is more complex. The scammers, through a hoax, get the victims to install one of the spy malware - also known as sniffer - which is marketed on the Deep web or Deep Internet. This allows them access to all the information that is stored and circulated through electronic devices. When they detect that a high money transaction is going to occur, they supplant the identity of the one who should receive it and receive the transfer.
The aforementioned police expert explains that these criminals usually use three modalities to supplant email. The first allows real access and total control over the victim's account. The spoofing email could be considered a fake , since it consists of sending an email with a false sender address. "It's a game of trileros," a "make-up" operation to consummate the hoax, says the inspector. The third way is somewhat coarser and depends on the degree of attention in the details that the potential victim has, because it consists of creating a domain - "that can be done for one euro" - and generating a very similar corporate email - it is worth with just change a word - to the recipient of the money.
The networks behind this type of fraud are usually very hierarchical and each member plays a definite role: "The mules are the people who take the money, the intermediaries are the ones who get them, while the dome operates from abroad, usually from countries from Eastern Europe or Africa, like Nigeria. "
Antonio Gómez points out that the amounts of these scams are usually quite high, since criminals monitor the talks until they detect a high economic transaction . In addition to the commercial operations of companies, payments related to the sale of a home are another of the scammers' objectives, as recent complaints have confirmed.
The fake Microsoft technician
In this method, the fraudster connects with the victim by telephone posing as a Microsoft company technician and informs him that he has a virus in the computer that he has to eliminate. "Speaking in Spanish, but with an English accent," which gives credibility to the staging, requests that a remote control program - such as Team Viewer - be connected and installed in order to eliminate the threat.
The false technician makes a paripé and obtains the data of the bank card or the access codes to the current account of the scammed when it is time to pay the 30 or 40 euros of the alleged repair. Once they obtain the passwords, they are made with the money, and they even request credits on behalf of the victim.
"It's about convincing what is happening, just as they did with virtual kidnappings, so they can be on the phone for more than an hour," said the source.
The ghost rentals
The applications for the sale of products, Wallapop type, and the rental portals are the ecosystems in which the fraudsters who opt for this modality develop and for whom the current difficulties of the real estate park are a key factor to achieve their objective.
Criminals include an advertisement for renting a home, with attractive photographs and at an interesting price, but that is not real. To those who contact, they are told that there is a lot of demand and those who bite begin to formalize the supposed contract without seeing the property. To do this, in addition to demanding payment in advance of several monthly payments, which they end up losing; they are asked to send documentation as a copy of the ID or payrolls that the criminals will use to request credits on behalf of the victim.
The police sources consulted explained that the profile of the scammed in this modality is usually that of young people and pointed out that the applications and portals collaborate when they are warned of the falsehood of the advertisement.
The job offer
This type of cyber-fraud is practically similar to the previous one, except that a job offer is used as a hook as an excuse to obtain the victim's personal data.
Romance scam
In a society in which human relations are replaced by contacts through applications and different internet portals, Tinder, POF or Badoo, for example, become the space in which the first contact with which the scammers occurs who style this modality capture their victims.
The head of the Cybercrime unit of the Province of Malaga Police Station reports the case of a woman who, "after giving all her savings to her supposed suitor, was willing to mortgage her house to give her more money." To a man he had never seen. "Fortunately, his son realized and alerted us before he could do it," he recalls.
These scammers "live on this" and "know how to get into the victims' pocket" taking advantage of their emotional deficiencies and inventing circumstances such as "your child has cancer" to establish sentimental ties that dispel doubts.
Online shopping
When these dates of gifts and offers have arrived, criminals create false websites where products are sold at very advantageous prices. When the customer formalizes the purchase, he provides the scammers with his card details, which they will later use to seize the money. And we say later because they hurry until the last moment to avoid that the complaints of the scammed scare away new possible victims.
Antonio Gómez advises that, whenever we are going to make an acquisition on the internet, make sure that we navigate through a secure site verifying that the address begins with the https hypertext transfer protocol . In addition, it is always advisable to scrutinize the opinions about the experience that other clients have had on that website.
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