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Turkey and Syria earthquakes are being used to steal money online

Criminals can use charities and donations to defraud people and often ask that they be by sending cryptocurrency

Several days after an event occurred earthquake of magnitude 7.8 who left a balance greater than 42,000 deathsvarious social aid organizations and associations have approached to offer their support to the people affected in Turkey and Syria. However, cybercriminals have also taken advantage of the attention that this situation has to generate opportunities to steal information and money to other people.

This is due to the fact that, mainly, one of the forms that the cybercriminals to generate online scams is taking advantage of possible situations that can generate attractiveness or interest by the users. An example of this is the previous use of supposed Photographs space telescope James Webb with which cybercriminals could infect devices with malware.

In the case of scams using the recent earthquake, these are mainly focused on the possible donations that they can collect from users who seek to help in some way to the recovery of people who lived in the areas affected by the earthquake. disaster. According to Josep Albors, head of research and awareness at the company ESET cybersecuritythese hoaxes are mainly spread in English and used cryptocurrencies to receive the alleged donation.

Some phishing campaigns encourage the user to share the information or email so that it can affect more people.  Photo: Zacharie Scheurer/dpa
Some phishing campaigns encourage the user to share the information or email so that it can affect more people. Photo: Zacharie Scheurer/dpa

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These types of scams that use a event disastrous or sensitive events involving human losses are commonly used by cybercriminals, indicated Albors, who also stated that this is because they are striking events that can be exploited. The aid scam after the earthquake also includes the generation of payments by other digital means such as PayPal.

For the security company Bitdefenderwhich published a release about this kind of virtual scams, these criminal activities are not new and may be common. “They can be quite effective at stealing money to unsuspecting and good-hearted people,” said the company, which also assured that these scams began to appear on the internet even before they happened. 24 hours after the earthquake.

As in other cases, the cybercriminals pretend to be companies or entities such as Unicef ​​so that users believe that the communication or the search for financial aid comes from a real and trustworthy entity, even though it is actually a scam From the first moment.

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In these cases, the users will have been victims of phishing, one of the modalities of online scams most common in the world in the last year. According to the report of Fraud Beat 2022 generated by the security company Appgate, approximately 80% of the cases of scams that are reported worldwide correspond to this modality.

Top 10 most impersonated brands by cybercriminals in the world.  (Check point)
Top 10 most impersonated brands by cybercriminals in the world. (Check point)

As a result of this, various studies in which it has been sought to establish what are the websitescompanies or businesses that are the most used to defraud people, which is why it has been possible to detect, for example, that yahoo is the most supplanted company with the twenty % of cases globally, while other brands of technology (Microsoft, Google, WhatsApp), sending packages (DHL, Fedex) and even banks (HSBC) are part of this scam scheme by way of brands impersonated.

Phishing cases not only tend to be directed at different accounts mail electronic at the same time to increase the impact of their attack, but also come from email accounts that are not official or that do not have a way to identify them as officersso take some time to check that the email account that sends the message is correctly written and that the information what they offer is true

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Users who have been affected or contacted at any time by various types of emails requesting verification billing of some servicerequest personal data or seek fundraising must ensure that the data that is sent by this means is correct and that it has been sent by companies real and not by users trying to supplant them.

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