The sending of fraudulent job offer messages allegedly linked to companies such as Meta or TikTok is worrying operators who are working with authorities and raising awareness among customers about the dangers.
Associations such as Deco continue to receive few contacts from victims despite warnings and awareness campaigns, while email fraud is on the rise and becoming harder to detect.
“Electronic communications operators are following this development with natural concern, constantly working to maintain the integrity and security of their networks, as well as the communications of their customers,” said the Secretary General of the Association of Electronic Communications Operators of Electronic Communications (Apritel). ), Pedro Mota Soares, in response to Lusa.
In the SMS messages, which are often sent using numbers starting with 92 and written in Brazilian Portuguese, the purported authors identify themselves as members of the human resources department of companies like TikTok and invite recipients to apply for “online job” positions with “ links.” is sent to supposed WhatsApp groups for this purpose.
“Hello, I’m from TikTok HR and I’m writing to you. We urgently need 100 employees to work “online” with a daily salary of 50 to 800 euros. You can take part in your free time. If you are interested you can join, contact us via WhatsApp […]. If you send us a message now, you will receive a bonus of 5 euros,” reads one such message.
This is a computer scam called smishing, which involves using SMS to obtain sensitive information such as bank details.
Contacts can also contact you directly via WhatsApp, foreign numbers, or by sending messages in Portuguese or English.
In these cases, posters often claim to have received applications from message recipients for a specific position and then ask for personal information.
To monitor this problem, operators have teams working 24 hours a day, “cooperating with the competent authorities, taking into account the current regulatory framework.”
Pedro Mota Soares also assured that the operators are “serious” about raising awareness of best practices to combat messages of this type, “which is why they do it actively on their own and in collaboration with all organizations involved in promoting the safe use of communication electronics.”
As Deco Proteste technology specialist António Alves explained, this type of scam always starts with sending a message with an attractive job offer.
“If a person takes the bait, they will send a “link” that will change and lead to a created page, a “dashboard.” [painel visual] with to-do list and social media logos. A person can register and after that they will be given tasks which may include commenting on videos and following some people,” he told Lusa.
As tasks are completed, a “hypothetical balance” appears, which can be derived, as a rule, only after two weeks of work.
At this point, the scammers ask you to transfer a small amount to a specific account to verify the IBAN or pay a fee, and then ask you to make transactions in cryptocurrencies, preventing tracking. being abandoned.
“They will start telling people that they need to transfer, for example, 100 cryptocurrencies, and they will do this up to the limit that they can get from a person,” warned Antonio Alves.
When people discover or suspect that they are involved in fraud, they are blocked, links stop working and they lose contact with the criminals.
New links and pages are then created to try to catch other people in the scheme.
According to consumer protection association Deco, when people fall for this type of scam, they find it “very difficult to get back the amounts transferred.”
However, the case must be reported to authorities such as the judicial police and the cybercrime unit of the prosecutor’s office, as well as the electronic complaint system and banks, if applicable.
“In general, these are situations that are difficult to resolve because even if you file a complaint, you will realize that it is difficult to identify the perpetrator of fraud who is behind the scheme. They use all types of scams. ways to hide your identity. Now you should always do this. Not all cases are lost. The very fact of filing an application speeds up the termination of the fraud,” concluded Antonio Alves.
According to global cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab, there were 700 million “phishing” attacks (a common name for email fraud) worldwide in 2023.
In Portugal, as the company noted, the main targets of these attacks are clients of banks and the service industry.
In addition to job offers, these scammers often use false promotions or messages from financial institutions.
Kaspersky recommends paying attention to the sender of the message, exaggerated promises, and unsolicited messages with links to enter personal information.
At the same time, users can access online tools that allow them to check whether the links they want to access are reliable.
Lusa contacted Meta, the owner of WhatsApp, Facebook and TikTok, but received no response.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
I’m Sandra Hansen, a news website Author and Reporter for 24 News Reporters. I have over 7 years of experience in the journalism field, with an extensive background in politics and political science. My passion is to tell stories that are important to people around the globe and to engage readers with compelling content.