The year is not even half over, but the FTC has already logged almost 500,000 fraud scams and over 300,000 cases of identity theft since January. According to the UN, an additional 782 million people have come online during the pandemic, raising the number of internet users globally from 4.1 billion to 4.9 billion. This increase brought a wealth of new and not-yet-savvy victims to the world of cybercrime, unfortunately at the same time that scams were growing more sophisticated and tricky.
The pandemic is not over, and there are still many Covid-19 scams preying on the innocent, but 2022 has seen a number of other underhanded schemes successfully swindling users out of their money. Here are the three most devious.
1. Imposter scams
The FTC ranks imposter scams as the most reported fraud threat so far this year, with 166,497 reports since January and a total of $616 million stolen. These scams involve bad actors pretending to be a business or government entity, typically informing the user of a possibly fraudulent purchase on their credit card. It’s a potent scam, as it causes a knee-jerk reaction in most users to click the provided link in order to protect their money. Ironically, clicking the link only lets the criminals into the users’ systems, threatening their identity and finances further.
How to protect yourself: When you receive one of these messages, take a deep breath and resist the urge to act out of panic. Close the email message and go to the…
