”Our ability to concoct scams has surpassed the ability to recognize scams.” In the movie “Simonie”, the actor played by Al Pacino sighs. The English name of the film replaces the two letters in the word “Simone” with numbers and is written as “S1m0ne”. As long as you understand the basics of computers, you can see that this implies the binary notation of computers. This film is about how the virtual actor “S1m0ne” is packaged to make audiences around the world think that this is a real human “Simone”.
As the initiator of the virtual actor scam, the actor played by Pacino finally paid the price for this deception. In reality, online fraud can cause damage in various forms. From the general public to multinational corporations to government agencies, they have all become the urn of online fraud.
Nigerian Scam: Targeting “idiots”
”The turtle in the urn” means that the victim has no power to resist and is caught with nothing. There are indeed some scams that can almost ensure that those who are infected cannot escape the doom of loss.
For example, “Nigerian scam”. The scammers send emails claiming that they have a huge asset in Nigeria (or other African countries), but they cannot extract it due to various identity verification or traffic problems. The scammer asks the person receiving the email to pay a certain amount of money, or provide a bank account to receive a sum of money to help them solve the current trouble. The scammer promised to distribute a substantial proportion of the assets to the recipients.
Obviously, most people will not believe this kind of absurd pie from the sky, but the crooks themselves have no intention of playing intellectual games with most people. The more ridiculous the background story seems, the more accurately the liar’s “target customers” can be located-because the “stupid” will be fooled. Those who cannot see the clues of a scam from the beginning often find it difficult to be vigilant at the last moments involving sensitive transactions or information. It is precisely this type of object that scammers hope to harvest.
For those who are suspicious at the beginning, liars need to spend a lot of words to make them put down their vigilance. The cost of communication is high, the success rate is low, and the benefits are not gratifying. Therefore, aiming at “idiots” is the way to “enhance efficiency.”
Although the target is “dumb”, scammers sometimes have low IQs. British computer expert Mike Berry is known for his “anti-teasing” Nigerian scammers. Bailey hung his identity as a priest, entrepreneur, artist, etc., and dealt with scammers. In the end, he was able to trick the scammer to take a selfie with a “idiot” sign, or copy the magical novel “The Lord of the Rings.”
British computer expert Mike Berry was able to trick a scammer into taking a selfie with a “idiot” sign.
Playing tricks with scammers is very popular, but in fact, Nigerian scams are still active. In 2019, the American security system company “Andate” released a report stating that the loss caused by the scam in 2018 was US$703,000, and the average loss per victim from 2016 to 2018 was US$2,133.
“419 Devourer” website collects anti-fraud material of scammers
In 2003, Berry established the website “419 Eater” (419eater.com, “419 scam” is another name for Nigerian scams. The code for fraudulent crimes derived from Nigeria is “419”). The deceived material laughed at them, but eventually became a platform for the deceived to communicate. The website is still running, and the scams discussed extend from the classic Nigerian scam to 14 types of scams, including love scams, lottery scams, and phishing scams. It can be seen that online scams are still rampant more than ten years later.
Credit Card Internet Fraud: Beginning in the E-commerce Era
The embryonic form of the Nigerian scam can be traced back to the “Spanish prisoner” scam in the 18th century. The liar claimed to be or knew a wealthy person. The dignitaries were falsely accused and detained in jail and needed to raise money secretly to rescue them. The scammers were lured by generous returns to pay, and ultimately suffered heavy losses.
There is nothing new under the sun, and the Spanish prisoner scam is still making waves 300 years later in the form of changing the soup without changing the medicine. However, the scope of harm from Nigerian scams today is mainly limited to individuals, while another type of “credit card fraud” with a long history has caused both individuals and businesses to suffer.
In 1994, e-commerce became more and more popular, and related online fraud methods gradually surfaced. The scammer puts the stolen credit card with the name of the celebrity and then uses it to make purchases. This is also a scam that can be called “mentally handicapped” today. The store received orders from Bill Clinton, Steven Spielberg, Bruce Wayne, and Mickey Mouse, and they still happily delivered the goods—they are still excited about gaining business through the virtual world, and lost The alertness he deserves.
When businesses started to understand the tricks of scammers, the scams continued to escalate. Someone has written a program that can generate real credit card numbers. Scammers try different card numbers in turn, and there is always a chance to use them; some people find loopholes in online malls and steal existing old user credit card information from them; some forge malls and let customers take the initiative Put your personal data in the hands of scammers… The
current mainstream credit card fraud is carried out in the form of “Card-not-present” (“CNP”). In the process of online credit card consumption, consumers do not need to display the physical card, and generally provide the card number, card validity period and three-digit security code (CVV) to complete the transaction. What the scammers need is this information, and then log in to major shopping malls to spend.
Credit card fraud is a two-way fraud. The loss of the business is particularly obvious. Because in accordance with the practice, if the card number is stolen due to the outflow, the credit card holder does not need to be held responsible, and the related losses will be compensated by the card issuer or merchant.
According to the estimation of “ClearSale”, an anti-fraud security consulting company, for every dollar of online credit card fraud in 2016, the merchant will have to bear a loss of $2.4. Losses mainly come from refunds, handling fees and replenishment of goods. Another network security company Juniper (Juniper) issued a report saying that it is estimated that online credit card fraud from 2018 to 2023 will cost retailers up to 130 billion U.S. dollars.
Merchants have suffered heavy losses, and consumers will also become victims of credit card fraud. The typical case is “black card transaction”. Scammers use stolen credit card information (black cards) to buy gift cards, digital games, digital music, etc. in online malls, and then sell them to consumers at low prices. Once the merchant believes that the virtual goods are purchased through a black card, the owner of the virtual goods will be disqualified from using the corresponding product, and the account will be blocked. Regardless of the level of punishment, consumers who are greedy for petty and cheap will eventually lose their property.
Sharp hooks hit human weakness
There are generally three ways to steal credit card information:
intrusion into the database-because card issuers, banks, online merchants, etc. all store a large amount of user credit card information, once the database is hacked, the information will flow out;
physical theft, using the customer to take out a physical card to swipe the card Opportunity, using a hand-made credit card machine to copy credit card information through the credit card magnetic stripe, this method has greatly reduced the feasibility now, because the card issuer usually adds a chip that can repeatedly update the encrypted information on the credit card;
phishing, using forgery Information, stories, and narratives lure card owners to actively provide credit card information.
Of the three methods, fishing is the most “scheming” method, because it requires the victim to “take the initiative”. Nigerian scam is a classic phishing model, which mainly targets people with greed. The US soldier scam takes the “emotional deception” route, which makes those who are looking forward to a romantic love a misstep. The scammers pretend to be American soldiers serving overseas, and send friend invitations through social networks to find targets. No matter how sweet the scammer’s love words to netizens are, the topic will eventually go in only one direction: asking netizens for money.
The store received orders from Bill Clinton, Steven Spielberg, Bruce Wayne, and Mickey Mouse, and they were still happy to deliver the goods.
Although the scam is not clever—for example, a scammer lied to say that he was in Iraq, and he could say that he had forgotten to consider jet lag when greeted in the morning. But the scammer aimed at the netizens’ yearning for romantic relationships, launching an offensive with such tricks as asking for warmth, affectionate money, and even marriage proposal. . In some cases of transnational online dating, scammers even promised to go to the country where the netizen lives to spend the rest of his life with them. False lingering still has the power to move people’s hearts, especially when the love field is like a battlefield. Who can guarantee that he will remain sensible in the promise of beautiful love?
Whether it’s because of asking for money or courting a spouse, some people think that it’s the greedy person who takes the blame. How can the marriage between heaven and wealth and gods appear so easily? But fishing’s grip on human weakness lies not only in “greed”, but also in “fear”, “laziness”, and other emotions. Receiving a bank account suspected of money laundering emails, the recipient will inevitably panic and walk into the chain set by the scammer; they want to study abroad, improve their academic qualifications or study skills, but mistakenly log in to the official website of the fake copy made by the scammer. These friends who are interested in learning If you are careful and pay attention to the URL structure or page design of your website, you may be able to avoid being fooled.
In the psychological game carefully crafted by crooks, government departments may not be able to escape the trap. In April 2019, the Chicago Aviation Authority received an email that appeared to be from the supplier Skyline Management, claiming that the bank account had changed. The bureau charged $1.15 million to this account, but was later complained by Skyline Management Company for the arrears. Only then did everyone know that they had encountered a liar. Fortunately, Wells Fargo Bank, where the scammer’s account is located, promptly frozen, and the Chicago taxpayer’s money did not flow into the scammer’s pocket.
In contrast, the “Industrial Development Corporation” funded by the Puerto Rican government was unable to turn the tide. Also after receiving the account change email, the Industrial Development Corporation had already transferred $2.5 million to the scammer before it discovered the suspicious situation.
Internet fraud: an unstoppable evolutionary step
This type of scam, which is carried out in the name of a supplier’s account replacement, has a special title-Business Email Compromise (BEC). The FBI defines BEC and phishing as two different types of cybercrime models. In its “2020 Cybercrime Report” released in 2021, phishing cases ranked first in the number of various types of cybercrime cases, as many as 240,000, and ranked second in the number of “non-shipment/non-payment” cases Twice. The BEC caused the largest amount of losses, as high as 1.86 billion US dollars, which is more than three times that of the second-ranked “credit scam/love scam”.
Previously, the FBI also disclosed in a statement that from November 2018 to September 2020, the loss of each BEC fraud was as small as 10,000 and as large as 4 million U.S. dollars. Local governments are the main targets of attacks.
BEC and love scams all belong to phishing, which shows that phishing has become a “significant study” of online fraud.
From the perspective of scams, BEC and love scams are all phishing, which shows that phishing has become a “significant study” of online scams. The scam is primitive, the number of people deceived continues to increase, and the losses continue to accumulate. Compared with exploiting human weakness, phishing techniques are more based on “bad information” to succeed: the victim either neglects to pay attention to all kinds of scam information or talks about the scammer. There is no basic knowledge in the field, or there is too much other information to be processed and the key details of identifying scams are ignored, and the obvious flaws in the eyes of others cannot be seen in the end.
However, this is a world of information explosion. This is a world where the “information cocoon” keeps people’s concerns locked in a limited area. Understanding scams and identifying scams may become more and more difficult-this is not an upgrade of the level of scams, but the narrowing of people’s channels for cognition of scams.
From celebrity scams in the “primitive age of e-commerce” to today’s endless scams with more than a dozen categories, the evolutionary level of online scams has always been ahead of the level of anti-scammers’ awareness. With the changes in the network environment, the situation of the fight against online fraud, which is “one foot high and the magic high” will only become increasingly severe.
