The expert spoke about new schemes to deceive customers during the sales season.

With the sales season approaching, phone and online scams have become more active. Attackers are increasingly posing as couriers or delivery service employees, taking advantage of the fact that in November and December people place dozens of orders and receive a lot of notifications. Boris Lopatin, MegaFon's senior fraud investigation expert, told Izvestia on November 17 how popular scenarios work and why they are still effective.

He noted that the peak activity of criminals occurs in November and December, when people receive a lot of parcels and notifications. Fraudsters rely on data leaks, copy official websites and send messages about "failed delivery", offering to click on the link for "re-registration". The purpose of such actions is to obtain bank card details. Quickly sent messages create a sense of urgency and make people act impulsively, which makes the scheme particularly effective.

Another common scenario is a call from a pseudo—courier who asks to dictate a text message code to "confirm delivery," Lopatin added.

"The attacker informs you that you have a package and to "confirm delivery" or "reschedule the time" you need a code that will come in an SMS, and asks you to dictate it out loud. Fraudsters enter the phone number of a potential victim in services that are not associated with financial risks. A subscriber can receive SMS messages with codes from different senders: flower and parcel delivery, marketplaces and online libraries," the expert explained, emphasizing that real courier services never request confirmation codes or personal information over the phone.

The horse will be stopped: scammers deceive Russians under the pretext of driving cars

The Interior Ministry told about a new scheme of deception with the purchase of cars from abroad

In addition, there is a scheme for replacing store pages: links can be sent via SMS, email, or appear in advertisements and search engines. Outwardly, such sites copy large marketplaces, but require you to enter your username, password, or card details. Lopatin advised manually entering the website address in the browser and using only official applications.

"If the SMS code or card details have already been obtained by fraudsters, compromised or entered on a phishing site, you need to act immediately. First of all, call the bank and block card transactions. Then you need to change passwords in your personal accounts and check the activity on Gosuslugi and other services where the same phone number or mail was used," the expert said.

In case of suspicious write-offs, contact the police. According to Lopatin, such schemes remain successful because they are based on emotions — haste, trust and the desire to receive an order quickly. Paying attention and checking the source of the message takes less than a minute, but it avoids serious consequences.

Yuri Silaev, head of the Laboratory of Trusted Artificial Intelligence at RTU MIREA, warned on November 11 that intruders had begun using artificial intelligence (AI) for new car purchase fraud schemes. Scammers place ads for the purchase of a car, where the buyer is promised significant savings on related payments or customs clearance. The trick is based on artificially limiting the decision-making time, forcing a person to act quickly, without the necessary verification of information.

All important news is on the Izvestia channel in the MAX messenger.