Behind those Instagram gifts or discounts, there are often scams designed to steal your data and impersonate your identity, reaching the point of accessing your bank account.
The draws for Instagram area common way for brands to make themselves known in exchange for the gift of a product or prize, but cybercriminals have begun to impersonate their identity to contact participants and get their personal data and even their bank accounts.
This has been alerted by the cybersecurity company Panda Security, which has detected 'phishing' attacks by cybercriminals who create Instagram profiles practically identical to those of the brands that carry out contests on the social network, usually with a letter or a symbol that differentiates them but is not easy to appreciate.
Scams To Steal Money
In addition, attackers use the same logos as companies to support their covers and upload the latest photos and publications of the company they are impersonating on their 'timeline'.
Using the contest as a hook, cybercriminals get in touch with the sweepstakes participants to inform them that they have supposedly won , and follow them to be able to write to them privately.
In direct messages, they are sent a link to a 'phishing' web page with contact forms to collect personal data such as physical address, email, passwords or date of birth. They even ask for bank details to make some kind of transfer.
However, 'landing pages' have also been detected - pages reached after clicking on a link - in which, once the form is filled out, the 'hackers' direct traffic to pages in which a code is inserted. malicious to track your internet browsing.
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At best, this 'malware' only indicates that a user is potentially easy prey for future scams. At worst, they can inject a 'ransomware' with which to hijack the internet user's digital identity.
Panda has recommended that participants in Instagram giveaways pay attention to some details to discover these scams, such as if brands put them in a great hurry in their messages so as not to lose the prizes , or if the language is not correct (for example, mix your and you or include grammatical errors).
Likewise, the company advises using cybersecurity tools, so that even if hackers deceive the victim, they have protection against unreliable web pages.
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