The Interior Ministry warned about the creation of fake work chats by scammers

Scammers steal data about a person using fake work chats created by them. Such schemes are often observed in the fields of education and healthcare. This was announced on June 6 by the Department for the Organization of the fight against the illegal use of information and communication technologies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation.

"Recently, there has been an increase in attacks on employees of organizations, especially in the fields of education and healthcare. Scammers actively use trust within teams by creating fake work chats," the department wrote on its Telegram channel.

According to the scheme, an employee is sent an invitation to a group chat with the name of his department or company. You can see the accounts of supposedly other employees in it. Sometimes employees who are unaware of the substitution are invited to such chats. After that, the account of the alleged supervisor joins it.

The employee receives an urgent task on behalf of the boss. So, for example, he may be asked to register in a "corporate" bot or update the data in the "system", confirm access to the resource. Subsequently, an SMS or notification with a confirmation code is sent to the employee's phone.

"At this moment, fake accounts of "colleagues" begin to massively send "their" confirmation codes to the chat. Then the "head" publicly praises them for their efficiency," the Russian Interior Ministry said.

As a result, an employee, seeing the "example of colleagues" and the "approval of superiors," as well as being under group pressure and urgency, loses his vigilance, which is why he reports the code sent to him.

According to the agency, the attackers specifically choose the fields of education and healthcare, as information about employees can often be found on the official websites of educational institutions, hospitals, and polyclinics. Thanks to this, scammers can create plausible fake accounts.

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Earlier, on June 4, the Interior Ministry announced the launch of a project to quickly identify and block fake websites and applications that steal confidential information. It will operate in test mode until March 1, 2026.