More than 50% of Russians surveyed experienced fraud before Black Friday

More than 50% of surveyed Russians have encountered thematic fraud on the eve of sales. This follows from the data of the financial marketplace "Vyberu.ru", which were reviewed by "Izvestia" on November 28.

According to analysts, in the period from November 10 to 29, more than a third of respondents (36%) faced thematic fraud, when attackers under the pretext of the annual sale tried to swindle money. In addition, 14% of respondents in this category ended up transferring money to the scammers. Last year, 48% of respondents encountered fraudsters on the eve of November sales, and 37% lost money.

As the experts noted, this year the scenarios of deception played out by criminals did not change much, most often - in 51% of cases - Russians stumbled upon copies of websites of famous stores, usually it was about hypermarkets of electronics. As the survey showed, this scenario turned out to be the most successful for fraudsters: Russians were the most likely to fall for such tricks.

In second place in popularity was the mailing of e-mails offering hot discounts from "stores" - 24% of respondents encountered this type of deception. If last year the mailings of scammers often imitated the advertising of electronics stores, then in 2024 the largest marketplaces are in the trend.

Closing the top 3 fraudulent schemes is sending malicious links in messengers - 19% of respondents have encountered such messages. According to analysts, the popularity of this method is decreasing: this year only 3% of those who encountered this type of fraud "fell for it", last year 28% of respondents encountered this fraudulent scheme, and 13% fell for it.

In the remaining 6% of cases, respondents encountered calls from banks offering to write off loans, forwarding links allegedly from "acquaintances" and messages about large winnings at sales.

"As we know, scammers are constantly monitoring the subpoenas. According to our data, the probability that a person will fall for a "thematic" divorce is almost twice as high. And official sale periods are fertile ground for attackers. After all, here they can safely operate their favorite trump card - the illusion of limited time, "- said the Director of Communications Policy Department "Vyberu.ru" Anna Romanenko.

She specified that in the vast majority of survey participants lost money precisely because the attackers did not give them the opportunity to calmly weigh everything. Usually con artists offer goods "on promotion", which is about to end.

"I would advise buyers to be more responsible about financial decisions on sale days and to be wary in case of too big a discount on expensive goods. That is, a washing machine for 60 thousand. in no way can not cost 5 thousand. If you see such a price tag and the site of the store looks unusual, most likely, it is about fraudsters," - concluded Romanenko.

Earlier, on November 17, Evgeny Pankov, project manager of the .RU/.RF domain coordination center, told Izvestia that there is a steady increase in phishing attacks conducted through messengers, especially Telegram and WhatsApp (owned by Meta, whose activities are banned in Russia). According to him, 2,374 domains imitating Telegram were blocked in Runet in the first 10 months of this year, which is 2.2 times higher than the same period last year. For the second messenger, the number of blocked domains increased more than five times - from 205 to 1,036.