The Top 6 Internet Scams of 2021
2021 is nearly over, so it’s time to look back over our website and social media stats to see what scams were the most prolific during the last 12 months.
Emails and texts offering COVID test kits, passports and passes
2021 has been the year of COVID testing, passes and vaccinations, so it was inevitable that the pandemic was going to make an entry at least once in out top scams of the year.
Text messages, social media messages and emails offering COVID passes or urging recipients to get COVID tests or vaccines have been immensely popular this year. Typically these messages are attempting to lure recipients to scam websites that steal payment and personal information that are entered into them.
They can be broadly categorised into these sub-scams.
- Messages offering COVID passes to travel or gain entry to certain establishments, which link to scam websites that steal personal and payment data.
- Messages offering vaccination or booster vaccination appointments, which link to scam websites that steal personal and payment data.
- Messages urging recipients to purchase testing kits, which link to scam websites that steal payments made to them.
All of these scams rely on victims clicking a link to a scam website. However some variants of these scams will instead ask a victim to call a phone number which connects them to scam call centres that also try and lure victims into handing over personal information.
‘Courier Missed Delivery’ SMS scams
2021 was a big, big year for SMS scams, and with more people venturing online to do their shopping due to the ongoing pandemic, we’ve seen a number of scams exploiting this boom in e-commerce.
None more so than the “missed delivery” SMS scam where a recipient would receive a text message claiming to be from a well-known courier company claiming they attempted and failed to deliver a parcel to the recipient. Such messages urged the recipient to click a link to reschedule their delivery. See the example below.
However these links led to scam websites that steal data, including payment data and sent them straight to scammers. What’s more, they could be used to harvest data from victims so the scammers could launch more targeted and convincing scams against them at a later date.
We discuss these scams in more detail here.
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The “Did We Meet on This Dating Website?” text message scam
During the mid-point of 2021 we started seeing a rise in reports of recipients receiving suspicious text messages from a person who claimed to have met the recipient on a dating website. But these odd messages were addressed to a different person. See an example below.
At first glance this could seem like a classic case of mistaken identity. I.e. messages intended for someone else. After the recipient explains they’re not the intended recipient and did not meet the sender on a dating website, the sender them follows up with apologies and flirtatious messages.
While it may sound like a cliched plot from a 21st century romantic comedy, it was actually a scheme to get the recipient talking before then attempting to direct them to adult pay-per-view websites with the promise of revealing photos.
So we’re sorry to burst that bubble. May be next time (though probably not). We discuss the scam in more detail in our post here.
‘Unclaimed Amazon Packages’ social media adverts
Facebook has long had a problem dealing with scammers infiltrating their Sponsored Ads platform. And this year that problem seemed to get even worse with thousands of scam adverts flooding the platform directing users to counterfeit websites.
Perhaps the most popular of these was the “Amazon unclaimed packages” scam, where Facebook ads would claim users could pick up cheap electronics and popular items that were returned to Amazon. But instead users would be directed to websites operating in countries like China peddling counterfeit products. (Such ads would also appear elsewhere online, including other social apps such as TikTok.)
While we haven’t seen many “Amazon unclaimed packages” adverts lately, there are still plenty of scammers using Facebook’s Sponsored Ads platform, so always be careful when clicking these sponsored ads. We took a look at these scams here.
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WhatsApp “Friend in Crisis” scam
This particular scam was incredibly popular in the UK and involved scammers messaging victims using WhatsApp claiming to be a relative with a new phone number.
Victims who believed the messages would soon be bombarded with urgent requests for money for “unexpected bills”. The victim would be asked to transfer money, often via gift cards or money transfer services, not knowing that they were communicating with cybercrooks, and the money they were sending was not going to a relative, but was about to be stolen by those same crooks.
Fake “subscription renewal” emails
We’ve seen a surge in emails claiming to renew a subscription for software, despite the recipient of the emails having no such subscription.
These emails are designed to alarm the recipient into phoning a “support” phone number in the email to cancel the subscription, not knowing that by calling the phone number they’re connecting themselves to a scam call centre with the intention of tricking them into revealing personal and sensitive information about themselves over the phone.
Such emails often claiming to be renewing a subscription to software such as Windows Defender, McAfee and Norton. We have more details on these scams here.