Scammers abused legitimate survey services by creating polls in the name of various organization to profit from victims’ personal, including sensitive, data. Others offered the coveted Green Pass without vaccination. For example, one website offered users to obtain a COVID vaccination certificate by entering their British National Health Service (NHS) account credentials. At the beginning of that year, we still observed phishing attacks that used the themes of infection and prevention as the bait. The COVID-19 theme had lost relevance by late 2022 as the pandemic restrictions had been lifted in most countries. These sites referenced public figures and humanitarian groups, offering to accept cash in cryptocurrency, something that should have raised a red flag in itself. Vast selection of available seats should have alarmed visitors: real tickets would have been largely gone.įake donation sites started popping up after the Ukraine crisis broke out in 2022, pretending to accept money as aid to Ukraine. Unlike legitimate ticket stores, the fake resellers were showing available seats in every sector even when the World Cup was almost closed. Scammers were betting on the finals typically being the most popular stage of the competition, tickets to which are often hard to get. Websites that offered tickets to the finals were another type of soccer-flavored bait. Those who chose to spend their money on a shady website risked never getting what they ordered. Scammers created websites that offered souvenirs at low prices, including rare items that were out of stock in legitimate online stores. Soccer fans chasing merchandise risked compromising their bank cards or just losing some money. Of course, no prize ensued after the fee was paid. After answering every question, the victim was told that they were almost there, but there was a small commission to be paid before they could get their gadget. Thus, during the World Cup a brand-new scam appeared: it offered users to win a newly released iPhone 14 for predicting match outcomes. Some websites that offered soccer fans free broadcasts of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar employed a similar scheme, but the variety of hoaxes aimed at soccer fans proved to be wider than that used by scammers who attacked film lovers. If the movie lover entered their bank card details on the fake site, they risked paying more than the displayed amount for content that did not exist and sharing their card details with the scammers. Several seconds into the “preview”, the stream was interrupted by an offer to buy an inexpensive subscription right there on the website to continue watching. By clicking what appeared to be a link to the movie, the visitor got to view the official trailer or a film studio logo. The promises of completely free access to the new content were never true. Those who just could not wait were in for a disappointment and a waste of cash. Short-lived phishing sites often offered to see the premieres before the eagerly awaited movie or television show was scheduled to hit the screen. ![]() The bait included the most awaited and talked-about releases: the new season of Stranger Things, the new Batman movie, and the Oscar nominees. The year 2022 saw cybercrooks try to profit from new film releases and premieres just as they always have. Phishing in 2022 Last year’s resonant global events
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