MADRID, (Portaltic/EP) – Experts identified a new ‘phishing’ scam on TikTok consisting of promoting false job offers in which promises of large monetary rewards are used as a hook and which result in the theft and use of user information. their victims to perpetrate other criminal activities.
Phishing scams continue to be a concern among users as cybercriminals continue to look for new ways to reach their potential victims.
Attempts to carry out this type of scam increased by more than 40 percent during the past year, reaching a total of 709,590,011 attack attempts, as noted by the security firm Kaspersky in its latest annual analysis on the spam and phishing threat landscape.
In this framework, these cybersecurity experts have identified a new ‘phishing’ campaign promoted through TikTok, consisting of sending false job offers in which large amounts of money are promised.
The social network owned by ByteDance has more than 18 million users in Spain, which makes it an important target for cybercriminals to distribute fraud campaigns such as the one recently identified, posing a threat to the digital security of users.
In this case, cybercriminals send an “attractive job offer” in direct message format through TikTok. They promise earnings ranging from 100 to 1,000 euros for one or two hours of work a day. Likewise, it is indicated that the use of a ‘smartphone’ is only required and that, to contact TikTok staff, you must access the link attached to the message.
Once clicked on, the user must enter personal information to register for the supposedly available vacancy. This is when victims start sharing data such as their names, addresses and phone numbers. At this point, malicious actors fraudulently collect the information for later use in other criminal activities.
The security firm has compared this ‘phishing’ campaign on TikTok with other similar ones, in which cybercriminals use fake messages related to messaging services and send them through messages to the smartphone.
In these cases, the scam begins with a notification that pretends to come from a known messaging service. In this communication, we inform you that an order could not be delivered because a customs payment could not be processed.
After that, the user is urged to click on the link attached to the notification to obtain more information; a fraudulent url that leads users to pages designed to steal victims’ personal and financial information.
Kaspersky has stated that part of the danger of these ‘phishing’ scams lies in their ability to constantly evolve and adapt to different formats and media and, in this way, reach more potential victims.
To avoid falling for this type of ‘phishing’ scam, cybersecurity experts have recommended that users open links and messages only when they are sure that it is from a trusted sender. Likewise, even if the sender is legitimate, when it is identified that the content of the message seems strange, it is recommended to verify with the sender the veracity of the content through an alternative means of communication.
They have also advised checking the spelling of the website’s URL, since if it is false, it may contain errors such as using a 1 instead of an ‘I’ or a 0 instead of an ‘O’.
Finally, the cybersecurity firm has also indicated that it is useful to use a security solution to browse the Internet that is capable of detecting and blocking ‘spam’ and ‘phishing’ campaigns.
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2024-06-11 01:19:13