Vladimir Zykov, president of the Association of Professional Users of Social Networks and Messengers (APPSIM), believes that the weakest link in most security systems is a person, and that is why social engineering is one of the favorite tricks of scammers.
“Sometimes it’s humiliating that we can even be fooled so easily. An attacker can formally design a letter, send it with a threatening warning about account deactivation – and the user is ready to share any data with a stranger,” he says.
At the same time, the mastery of scammers, according to Zykov, cannot be ignored. Realizing that people are less trusting of questionable links, they still offer to send all the information they need in a response letter – the head of APPSIM says it’s extremely simple and, as it turns out, effective.
“Of course, no one is immune from mistakes, and after meeting with scammers on the network, anyone may need the help of a lawyer sooner or later. This is evidenced by the statistics of the Center for Legal Assistance to Citizens in the Digital Environment – in the first half of 2023, lawyers received 1,600 appeals, 2.3 times more than the previous one. And almost half of all requests came from victims of fraudulent activities – this is 45%, ”says Zykov.
The demand for legal support is also confirmed by the geography of citizens’ appeal: As the expert noted, more than 800 are residents of large cities and more than 300 are residents of small towns and rural areas.
It was known that there were scammers before started to apply A simplified yet effective social engineering scheme against the Russians that allows attackers to steal logins and passwords without using malware or even phishing sites with fake forms to enter authorization data.