The State Police, through Facebook, provides the details of a new online scam: a fake 250 euro shopping voucher in exchange for your data
The channels chosen by cybercriminals are always the same: social networks and instant messaging apps such as WhatsApp. Even the online scams are the usual ones: vouchers and rather large shopping vouchers in exchange for the answers to a few seemingly innocuous questions.
Despite the fact that the scheme is the usual one, however, the number of users who take the bait of yet another web scam is constantly growing, so much so that the State Police, through its Facebook account "Commissariato di PS online - Italia", has released an announcement to warn all its fans. There are no gift vouchers, nor €250 shopping vouchers: this is the most classic kind of bait-and-switch designed to steal data from unsuspecting users and "force" them to install malicious apps that can take control of their mobile devices, effectively turning them into "zombie computers" directly dependent on hackers and cyber criminals.
How the online scam spreads and how to defend yourself
As you can read on the Facebook page of the State Police, the "infectious" vectors exploited by hackers are the usual ones: social networks and, first of all, instant messaging applications such as WhatsApp. The victims receive from one of their contacts a message that is only apparently harmless and, above all, authentic. To celebrate the anniversary of their opening in Italy, the supermarket chain Carrefour would give away €250 shopping vouchers: all there is to do is press on a link and answer three questions. As specified by the French company itself, there is no promotion and no prize competition going on: the shopping vouchers are just a well thought out scam attempt.
Unfortunately, defending yourself from this type of online scam is quite simple: just don't click on the link in the message and that's it. Just to be on the safe side - maybe you put your finger on the link and run the risk of getting infected - delete the message and inform your contact about the incident: there might still be time to prevent your friend from falling victim to yet another online scam.