Russians were warned about scammers cloning accounts

Cloning an account on social networks is one of the ways that scammers use to steal personal data. The Center for Digital Expertise of Roskachestvo warned about this on Tuesday, April 8.

"Scammers collect all available information from your profile, such as your name, photos, and other profile contents, and duplicate it into a new profile. As a rule, victims do not learn about this directly, but from friends or acquaintances who have received a suspicious friend request or a message asking for help," the Center said in an interview with Lenta.Ru .

Sometimes scammers even get in touch themselves and demand money, threatening to use the clone to deceive.

Experts recommended periodically checking your profile for a double.

"Enter your first and last name in the search bar on the platform and carefully review the results. If you find suspicious accounts duplicating yours, immediately inform the support service," Roskachestvo said.

The head of the Center, Sergey Kuzmenko, clarified that protecting an account from cloning primarily involves monitoring profile visibility, because it is accounts filled with information that are susceptible to this threat.

"It's important to strengthen your account's privacy settings and reduce the number of people who can view your profile and posts. By limiting visibility to friends only, you will reduce the likelihood that scammers will gain access to the information they need to clone a profile," Kuzmenko recommended.

According to experts, having gained access to a list of friends on a social network, scammers send messages asking them to transfer money or offer to follow dangerous links. In addition, attackers can post a provocative comment and then blackmail the victim in return for deleting it.

Roskachestvo recommended that the first thing to do is report the clone to the support service, and then send a warning to all your contacts.

Alarm bells: Putin declared unacceptable scale of fraud in the Russian Federation

What measures do the Cabinet of Ministers and the Central Bank propose to protect citizens from cybercriminals?

Earlier that day, Konstantin Larin, head of Cyber Intelligence at Bastion, told Izvestia that the number of fraud schemes in Russia could decrease. This may be influenced by the new law on countering telephone fraud, he believes.

On the same day, the head of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, Elvira Nabiullina, said that almost 9 million Russians took advantage of the opportunity to establish a self-ban on lending. 360.ru . She noted that this is an indicator for a period that is only slightly more than one month, reports RT.

A service with the ability to prohibit the issuance of loans to oneself has been launched on the Gosuslugi portal since March 1. Those who have submitted such an application have a special mark in their credit history, in the presence of which banks and microfinance organizations must refuse a person in the case of a loan application. At the same time, the self-ban does not apply to mortgages, educational loans, and car loans.