The cyber scams on dating sites and social media are increasingly frequent, here are the tips of the Postal Police not to fall into these traps
Given the now massive spread of sites and applications for dating and love appointments, even cyber criminals have begun to target dating services to create online scams and make fall into the trap thousands of users.
To prevent the phenomenon of viruses on dating sites from becoming a real cyber security problem, the Postal Police has shared on its Facebook page a series of useful tips for users to identify and avoid this kind of online scams. First of all, it must be said that the frauds related to dating sites nowadays are not only spread on special web applications and portals, but hackers also create ad hoc malicious messages also for social networks and email, in order to increase the number of people who can fall into their traps. The important thing in this case, as well as in most cyber threats, is not to send data, photos, videos or information that belong to us to people we do not know well or who have contacted us online.
How to Recognize Attempts at Sentiment Fraud in Social Media
Almost always, cyber criminals contact their victims in a fairly schematic way. First we will be asked to be friends, or we will be sent a generic message if the service does not provide a list of friends. In a second moment the hackers, will exploit the principles of social engineering through fake profiles of beautiful women or handsome men, they will begin to create a relationship of trust with us, up to create a bond. At this point usually the scam is divided into two phases. If the hacker realizes that we are really interested in him and in getting to know him, he will tell us that at the moment he has a problem in the place where he is and that unfortunately he doesn't have the money to solve this problem and meet us. Slowly the hacker will ask us if we can help him financially and if we do he will always delay the meeting making excuses and asking for more money. On the contrary, if the hacker notices that we are more interested in photos and something physical instead of sentimental, he will start some pushy conversations with us, sending us fake hot photos taken from the Net and asking us to send intimate photos. If we send these kinds of shots the blackmail will start. The hacker will tell us that in fact we have fallen victim to a sex scam and that if we do not pay our naked photos will be published on the network and turned to all our contacts.
How to defend ourselves from scams on dating portals
To defend ourselves from these scams there are a number of tips to put into practice. First of all, we absolutely avoid sharing our most confidential information with people we don't know, such as hot photos or credit card numbers. It seems obvious, but sometimes, blinded by a love affair, we lose sight of these simple concepts. Secondly, we look online for the profile picture and the photos sent by the person who contacts us telling us to be in love with us online, if they are recycled photos from other sites or if they are photos used for other scams Google will warn us. We read carefully the messages sent by the person who pretends to be in love, often are foreign hackers to contact us and translate the texts using translation services inefficient. If we notice a lot of mistakes, we should be alerted. Finally, if we decide to meet our patron in person, let's notify some trusted contacts of the appointment and devise a method to alert these contacts quickly in case of any possible dangerous situation.