In the conditions of the coronavirus disease pandemic, the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the increase in the number of devices connected to the worldwide Internet, the exponentially increasing dependence of enterprises, institutions and companies and their employees on digital technologies, Ukrainians face an increased risk of becoming a victim of cybercriminals.
The process of Internet fraud is getting bigger and bigger. Its organizers are inventing new schemes to extract money from users.
Since the beginning of the year, under fraud 2,000 criminal offenses have been registered in Mykolaiv region. More than 850 crimes were recorded directly in the field of cyber fraud.
In 650 cases, the guilty persons were charged with suspicion.
The most vulnerable population category is the elderly. In order to prevent the spread of this shameful phenomenon, the employees of the Department of Combating Cybercrime in the Mykolaiv region of the Cyber Police Department of the National Police of Ukraine conduct explanatory work with them.
On October 24, the operational officer of the department, police lieutenant Yurii Popov talked with regular readers and visitors of the Central City Library named after M.L. Kropyvnytskyi.
"Let's talk about popular fraudulent schemes on the Internet and popular schemes operating today in the Mykolaiv region. What people fall more often for? One of the popular fraudulent schemes is a phishing letter in the Telegram messenger with a request to vote for a niece or a child. Namely for a children's drawing. People follow this link, register in Telegram (via the Telegram messenger). They left their authorization data and then fraudsters gain access to this messenger. They completely disable the user from his account and on his behalf ask his friends to transfer money to the card or continue to send this phishing link to their friends," says Yurii Popov.
Experts in the field of cyber security advise not to respond to this type of message in any case.
"Secondly, if you have already followed this message and left your data, you need to quickly check your connections in the messenger, in the settings. If you see any strange connection, you should immediately disconnect it and install two-factor authentication," the police lieutenant notes.
The library readers were also trained by specialists in the rules that will help counter the efforts of criminals relying on social engineering methods in the network.
"The training was very fruitful. I liked it. I learned a lot of new things. What I was interested in. Simple, accessible, understandable ... Well, I met with one such case. Someone called me. I called 102. They told me to block this number. Since I bought a smartphone recently, I didn't know how to do it. I asked them to do it. If you can, block this number. They asked me for this number, I gave the number called from. So they helped me. Thank you in this case, I want to say", - Liudmila Reznychenko, a resident of Mykolaiv, a reader of the Central City Library named after M.L. Kropyvnytskyi shares her impressions.
In general, fraudsters are constantly improving their methods, so it is important to be on guard and follow new trends in Internet security.