They steal bank and personal data with ‘traps’ in the favorite online games of the little ones
The cybercriminals They made a killing during the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, and they continue to do so. In the Murcian Community, more than half of the complaints received by National Police are related to crimes on the Internet. According to the Crime Balance of the Ministry of the Interior, the Region of Murcia is the autonomous community in which cybercrime grew the most in 2022. And cybercriminals (as well as criminals from all over the life) are preying on the most vulnerable: children and the elderly.
Specifically, as stated in the last document issued by the department of Marlaska (whose data correspond to the period between January and December 2022), cybercrimes increased in the Murcian Community 24.1% compared to the previous year. A statistic that gets even worse when compared to the figures recorded in 2019, the last year before the pandemic. Digital crimes have increased in the Region by 146.5% since then, Interior reflects.
The autonomy registered a total of 9,937 illegal acts of this kind last year. In 2021, there were 8,009 crimeswhile four years ago, before the covid caused these cybernetic ‘baddies’ to gain momentum, the number was 4,031.
Hackers camouflage digital scams with the umbrella of false offers on new applications and prizes
Within digital crimes, scams are the great danger for Internet users. This type of crime represents 86.7% of the total of those committed in the province: in 2022, there were 8,619 cases; in 2021, 6,754, while before the pandemic there were only 3,358.
False princes in the doldrums
“There is a phrase from a colleague who says that the cybercriminal is no longer going to rob your house: steals from yours”recently told La Opinión the head of the Technological Investigation Team of the Civil Guard in the Region, which emphasized that “sometimes the first virus is the user himself, who gets where he shouldn’t.” That is what is happening with infants and the elderly: they enter pages or applications in which, without them knowing it, they end up being victims of cyber scammers.
And it is that the kind of hoaxes on the Internet have mutated and evolved over the years, as have the users, and they no longer receive as many emails as before in which they requested, for example, an amount of money in exchange for promises like the inheritance of a foreign prince who dies without issue. An American prince or lady who, strangely, writes to the email of someone from the Region and tells him that she has decided to leave him all her money just because. Although, expert researchers point out Technological Crimesthis keeps happening and people keep stinging.
More than half of the complaints received by the National Police in the Region have to do with cyber scams
Also, the methods are much more sophisticated and seek vulnerability of those who are less used to dealing with fraud attempts: children and the elderly.
The increase in the use of technology by children and the elderly also brings the rise of cybercrime focused on these age ranges, because, in general, they are people with less knowledge of how to prevent this type of scam. What criminals would consider an easy target.
About how they manage to fool children, who don’t know what a scam is, obviously have a bank accountthe key is that they do it as a game.
In the games with which minors are entertained with the mobile (many times, with their parents’ terminal, since these are children who are too young to have their own phone) more and more ads pop up of products that can include additional payments, something that cybercriminals are taking advantage of: children click unintentionally. Hackers camouflage digital scams under the umbrella of bogus offers on new apps and prizes. That is to say, they steal bank and personal information from the parents by playing the most popular online games ‘traps‘ in which minors fall.
Experts explain that many of phishing attempts they hide behind bogus offers selling goodies to kids: they are urged to download the latest version of a game that may be fraudulent, or to enter data to receive free rewards in a given game. They accept without knowing what it is.
In the case of the elderly, something similar: they accept notices on their mobile phones that jump out at them and they assume that They are real messages that pretend to be from the bank and alert that the account has been blocked.
Said the person in charge of Technological Research Team that “a homicide can be solved in two days, but a cybercrime is more complicated”. Permits must be requested from the judicial authority and information from the operators, sometimes companies that are not in the Region: they are not even in Spain.
They introduce children to dangers such as gambling and cryptocurrencies
Fernando Miró is in the neighboring province of Alicante the director of the Crime Center of the Miguel Hernández University (UMH), dedicated to applied scientific research and the training of professionals in the analysis, prevention and treatment of crime. It warns that, currently, ‘phishing’, which is the name given to crimes that seek to obtain personal and banking information, has changed: “You no longer need to access the account, but it is enough to get it to be make payments through simpler means such as Bizum,” he says.
“Now everything is turning into a game, and it is the applications themselves that introduce children to dangerous dynamics such as betting or the world of cryptocurrencies, which are still financial investments for which they are not prepared,” he declares. Fernando Miro.
In his opinion, “one of the most obvious solutions is not to share electronic devices because the child does not control the message he receives, but the father is not aware of what the game in which his children participate can include” .
“The fundamental thing is that there is more education for both children and parents and the elderly to know how to use technology safely, as well as to know the dangers they may face.”
The Prosecutor’s Office alert
The superior prosecutor of the Region, Jose Luis Diaz Manzanera, has also warned of this problem associated with cybercrime: the difficulty of stopping (even locating) criminals who act online. “To register on social networks, it is enough to be the owner of an email account, so anyone can register and unsubscribe in a short space of time,” the prosecutor is clear, who has seen how “the trail of the author of cybercrime is transformed and can disappear quickly.
In the case of video games in which minors bite without knowing what they are doing, the problem is that what the applications do is legal. The little ones accept without knowing what they are accepting or that they are going to make charges in your father’s or mother’s bank accountaccount that they do not have to type: it is already associated with the phone.
By municipalities, in the Region, the palm in cybercrimes goes to Murciawith 3,214 in 2022 alone, followed by Cartagenawith 1,519, and by Molina de Segurawith 528. In lorca, last year there were 444 illegal online; in Mazarron200.