In March, the number of fraudulent calls to Russian phones decreased 10 times. This was reported to socialbites.ca by the RTM Group. Gazinformservice made a more measured assessment – the number of such searches has decreased by three times. Post Bank, Ak Bars Bank and Renaissance Credit also confirmed this trend.
“We recorded a decline in the share of social engineering in February-March,” the Post Bank press service said. Ak Barlar Bank press service reported that they observed a significant decrease in the number of fraudulent calls made to customers in March.
Renaissance Credit Vice President Sergey Afanasiev noted that the bank had recorded a decline in fake calls “several times”.
Reasons for falling
Gazinformservice listed several factors shaping the trend.
“This is the possible destruction of underground call centers during a special operation and the difficulty of purchasing Russian phone numbers from the territory of Ukraine. Also, the inaccessibility of the network and cellular infrastructure for scammers. Plus, scammers are now moving to other neighboring countries”
– clarified at the system integrator and developers of information protection tools in the field of security.
According to the company’s analysts, with a high probability, fraudulent call centers will soon start working again from the territory of neighboring states, primarily Central Asia.
Ak Barlar Bank agreed with this prediction. “We assume that this is due to the termination of the work of fake call centers in Ukraine. Currently, the only recorded calls are made by single scammers from the territory of Russia, ”explained bank representatives.
Our estimations are that once the deportation process is complete, Russia will face a series of new phone attacks. This can happen in about three to four months,” says Gazinformservis.
Credit institutions advise citizens not to lose their vigilance.
“In February-March this year, the situation has changed dramatically. However, the activities of the scammers remained at a high level. As VTB told the press service socialbites.ca, attackers are constantly adapting attack scenarios to the news agenda, they want to take advantage of the uncertainty and often take advantage of instantaneous decisions about customers’ accounts and savings.
According to the bank, calls from scammers are now being made under the guise of “protecting customer funds.” Transfers to “secure” accounts ensure that SWIFT is available for transfers from them or foreign currency investments through “partner banks” with no commission.
new vector
Gazinformservice pointed out that while phone scams decreased in March, the number of phishing attacks aimed at stealing payment information from fraudulent sites increased many times over.
“Based on the decline in the number of fraudulent searches, there has been a huge increase in phishing emails and phishing ads on the Internet. Scammers are trying to divert the attack vector to a more accessible vector,” the company explained.
MGV Plekhanova Natalya Mamedova, a leading employee of the basic department of digital economy of the Institute of International Education and Science of the Russian University of Economics, announced the new trend with consistency.
“It’s much harder to resist scammers with anything on the web than to hang up, as with phone scams,” explained the expert.
The VTB press service noted that in March, scammers became more active, creating fake sites with preferential currency exchange offers, as well as “intermediaries” who offer assistance in paying by cards or setting up VPN services for foreign services.
Bank experts advise to be as careful as possible and get all the necessary information about your accounts and transfers only from official sources.
“When paying with a card, it is recommended to use only verified sites, and also carefully check the links before clicking on them,” said the VTB press service.
To distinguish a scam site from an official site, you should always pay attention to the URLs and domain names of the sites. Versions of scammers’ sites often contain typos. Poor layout, spelling and grammatical errors, other colors in logos can also indicate that this site is fake. Never enter your personal information if the site looks suspicious to you.