Online scams are rampaging at the moment and defrauding thousands of online users all around the world. Most of these scams are focused on information theft and are financially motivated. Recently, reports from several agencies disclosed a large scale of Business Email Compromise (BEC) and Email Account Compromise (EAC) scams.
BEC/EAC scams devouring billions of dollars
- Recent reports from the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) indicated that losses from BEC and EAC scams surpassed $1.86 billion last year.
- The IC3 received more than 19,000 reports of BEC/EAC scams in 2020. The losses increased by over $90 million and counted for 45 percent of the total losses ($4.2 billion).
- In several cases, scammers managed to defraud government agencies as well, leading to losses of millions of dollars.
- In addition, the FBI issued an advisory about BEC attacks targeting the U.S. state, local, tribal, and territorial entities.
Other scams aren’t left behind
In the last few months, several scam campaigns have been observed stealing information and money from the victims.
- Recently, some cybercriminals have been observed to be offering fake COVID-19 test results and vaccination certificates in black markets and at hacking forums on the dark web.
- A few days ago, a fraudulent scheme was sending renewal notifications of software to potential victims.
- Another scam campaign has been observed to be using fake DEX exchanges. The campaign is focused on users of popular Discord cryptocurrency servers.
- In addition, more than 6,000 cases of COVID-19-themed fraud and cyber-crime have been observed by the U.K police forces. These scam cases were observed during the pandemic.
Conclusion
Security agencies are continuously raising alerts and providing appropriate security recommendations. However, looking at the increasing frequency and volumes of such online scams, it has become very important for all organizations and individuals to actively share responsibilities of keeping themselves aware and proactively follow cybersecurity hygiene to stay safe.
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