scam – Scam Counteracted

PS5 and Xbox Series X order scam

The release of the PS5 and Xbox Series X video game consoles has generated many scam attempts

Sony’s PS5 and Microsoft’s Xbox Series X are finally out. But there have also been many scam attempts.

These consoles were eagerly awaited by video game fans, but the stocks available were clearly not up to the mark. Many people have been unsuccessful in getting their new consoles from regular merchants, either physical or online.

This has led some fans to search the internet for alternatives. Crooks have understood this and have created hundreds of scams around the PS5 or Xbox Series X.

Fraudulent sites promising the much sought-after consoles

Firstly, pre-orders on official sales sites quickly reached their thresholds. The crooks then created fraudulent sales sites, promising players to order the coveted consoles.

These scam sites could display the name of a completely unknown merchant or be a copy of a legitimate site, that copy being owned by crooks.

To recognize a fraudulent site, special attention should be paid to the following points:

The look of the website: Unlike long-established official websites, scam websites are often created for the occasion. We can note a lack of finish and professionalism in the presentation.
“Suspicious” selling points: To justify their stock while the PS5 and Xbox Series X are out of stock with all other merchants, fraudulent sites will advance dubious reasons. For example: We recovered a lot of unsold items from Amazon.
Selling prices below market prices: The PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles have just been released. No serious seller will sell them at a bargain price

For now, the best option is to be patient and wait until other PS5 or Xbox Series X consoles are available for sale from a recognized dealer.

In any case, the crooks play on the eagerness of the players to get a PS5 or an Xbox Series X. Sometimes unfortunately also on their gullibility.

Users of Gmail, Google’s email, are victims of phishing attempts

Gmail users are not safe from phishing. Indeed, the e-mail platform of Google is also the prey of a phishing attempt, unfortunately quite well orchestrated.

To understand this phishing on Gmail users, let’s begin by reminding what phishing is. Who has never received an e-mail indicating a refund due to an overpayment? Or a mail from a bank requiring you to enter your password as part of an audit procedure?

The crooks send thousands of e-mails like these, pretending to be an official entity (Bank, Microsoft, Apple, …). Their goal is that a victim believes this and discloses personal information (Credit card number, password, …). This scam on the internet is what is called phishing.

Phishing applied to Gmail

In the case of Gmail, the phishing attempt looks a bit different. The method is about sending a message to the person to be trapped. For more efficiency, scammers used a corrupted account belonging to a legitimate owner known by the potential victim.

This mail invites the recipient to open a document stored on “Google Drive”, the cloud storage service of the Internet giant. This service is pretty well known to familiar Gmail users. But after having clicked on the link, the Gmail login page appears of instead of the expected document.

Surprised, the person thinks he / she has been disconnected and then enter again his email address and password. Unfortunately, this is where the fraud takes place. It was not an untimely disconnection, but a misleading page displayed by the crooks after having clicked on the request to access Google Drive.

Skilled users were trapped

The scammers have now recovered the login / password and then rapidly access the victim’s mailbox. They check e-mails for sensitive data. They also take advantage of this access by stealing the address book of the victim. The scammers can then reproduce the process of such phishing attempt.

This phishing attempt targeting Gmail accounts is subtle and many skilled users get caught. A more discrete, visible element of this fraud attempt is the URL used. This is different from the normal address: https://mail.google.com. But scammers know that we don’t always pay attention to the content of the bar at the top of the internet browsers.

Be vigilant Gmail users! And pay attention especially if one of your contacts invite you to view a document on Google Drive.

The crudest scams are more effective

A Microsoft researcher has recently published a study on scams attempts by emails. The most outlandish stories are more effective and produce better results!

The bigger, the better it works! One could say that this is the conclusion in one sentence of the study made by Cormac Herley. This study, very mathematical, says that e-mails written in broken English and looking obviously to a scam are yet more effective.

If scammers refine their e-mail traps by taking care of spelling and reporting a less complicated story, they probably would affect more people in the first phase. But the work that awaits them would be increased tenfold. So that ultimately many attempts will reveal to be unsuccessful because the persons receiving these e-mails would have guessed the scam meanwhile.

With stories riddled with spelling mistakes and promising incredible heritage or huge gains in a lottery on the internet, scammers receive little answers. But those answers are more likely to lead to a scam. In this way, they avoid having to deal with many answers and can focus their efforts on the curious people who answered.

Scammers do not have time to waste, and efficiency is a desirable goal! Only the most interested internet users respond to these emails. For a crook, an Internet user who answers has already one foot into the scam. Scammers have “only” to conclude the scam with some well-crafted speech, and this is a domain where they are the masters.

Again, we have been saying it on our site for a long time, inheritances coming from unknown person or Internet lottery winnings are scams! Never send money to someone you met on the net. Whether it is to help or to advance expense. These are scams! And you will definitely regret it if think you can get money from an unknown person on the internet