Any crisis is a fertile time for scammers of all stripes to flourish. Human psychology plays into their hands. Right now, like most people, something doesn't work out, and suddenly, at arm's length, some string magician or "bank employee" is suddenly announced, ready to make you happy with free money. The Internet, as the best invention of mankind, alas, has also become the main channel for many adventurers. 

Fake sites
A well-known divorce, constantly adapting to the current agenda. The bottom line is simple: scammers create a site that either looks like some long-known and trustworthy resource, or disguises itself as sites of a certain subject (for example, medical). The goal is to extract the bank card details from the visitor in any way.

According to the latest trends, crooks can pretend to be a store of some pharmaceutical company that allegedly offers to buy a test for recognizing coronavirus. You pay online - the courier delivers. Everything is as usual, except that you never receive the goods, but the details of your bank card will get to the attackers.

How to be?
What to do to prevent this from happening? The tips are simple, but for some reason not everyone uses them. First, make sure that the site is exactly what you want, without the "extra" letters and characters in the URL. Secondly, go only to trusted resources that have existed for a long time and are known to everyone. Thirdly, do not scatter your card data right and left, especially on the Internet.

A very busy customer
And with this kind of deception, those who sell something at online flea markets should be careful. You put up, for example, a boring iPhone for sale, and now a suitable "buyer" is found. He gets in touch through the messenger and gets into trust: he asks about the condition of the goods, packaging, and so on. Curiously, the fraudster almost always introduces himself as a girl.

When everything seems to be settled, an insignificant nuance becomes clear: the customer is absent from the country and is generally very busy, but she really wants to make a gift to her nephew / brother-in-law / matchmaker. The money for the goods is ready to be transferred to the seller's card. Previously, they stupidly tried to ask everyone about the card, but today they act more cunningly: they drop a link to a phishing page disguised as the official bank page, and now they have to enter the card data there. Obvious proximity to the type of fraud described above.

There are many subspecies of this type of fraud. There are also more sophisticated ones. It involves a US buyer, an "American" bank that is rushing you to pay, and even a fake FBI. In general, the fantasies of the dealers can only be envied.

How to be?
When someone tries to pay you for something with some kind of bank transfer, this is already a reason to be wary. Never share your bank account information with third parties: neither your username, nor your password. Even if you really want to. Unless you have a lot of free time, don't try to teach and educate scammers - it's useless, although sometimes fun.

Nigerian letters in a new way
The so-called Nigerian letters are still alive and well. They change, improve, their style from year to year becomes more ornate and "trusting". Incredibly, there are still a lot of people who believe: a little more, and they will become heirs of enormous wealth from an unknown overseas uncle.

Deceased businessmen and lawyers have replaced African princes and their trusted doormen. Here, for example, from the freshest. Someone "attorney Philip Scott" says that he has been trying to write to us for a long time. The reason is important: you need to transfer a huge amount of money from a bank to the UAE. It was left by a deceased billionaire, who, by a lucky chance, turned out to be my relative. Of course, you can't do without my help.

If you respond, then you will be promised many billions and millions. In return, you need a trifle - send some hundred dollars for paperwork and for the transaction itself.

How to be?
I must say that Google's mail service usually easily recognizes spam in such emails and automatically places them in the appropriate folder. If it doesn't, do it yourself. In any case, come to terms with the idea that you do not have billionaire relatives abroad.

Extortion
One of the most beloved topics of modern scammers. There are two types of extortion: imaginary and real. The first is simpler and does not require any effort or skill from attackers other than the ability to convincingly threaten via email. You most likely received such a letter late last year or early this year.

Scoundrels write all sorts of nonsense, filled with technological terms. People who are not too "in the subject" can be impressed. What if the hacker really hacked the router and placed his malicious code on it? The scoundrel then claims to have discovered that you are a frequent visitor to porn sites and are watching something that "has nothing to do with the normal perception of the average person." Further - the requirement to transfer $ 500-550 in bitcoins to an electronic wallet, instructions on how to do this, and a threat to send all relatives and friends a video allegedly recorded from your laptop camera.

The second method of extortion is more sophisticated. Your computer can really be hacked, after which access to mail, computer, work files will be blocked. Often a warning is displayed on the screen, which cannot be closed and which requires the payment of a fine for viewing pornography. This is a simpler option. The variant is more complicated - cybercriminals gain full remote access to your computer using a virus sent by mail, encrypt the contents and demand money for decryption.

How to be?
In the first case, the easiest way is to simply ignore the letter about the "hacked router" and "sophisticated fantasies." In the second, you may have to contact specialists. And in order not to get caught by serious ransomware, it is enough to set complex passwords, configure Word to scan macros as much as possible and turn on the display of file extensions (then it will be clear that, for example, in front of you is not a text document, but a script, that is, a potential virus).

High tech pyramids
The Internet is one of the sources (although not the main one) for the replenishment of numerous high-tech pyramids by new adherents. This is, in fact, about all the same "MMM", but highly pumped. Modern pyramids like to trump the salvation of the planet with the help of some hi-tech unprecedented miracle device. The role of this can be a perpetual motion machine, a golden teapot, string-space locomotives, or even your own computer with unique software.

With the help of what exactly money will be extorted from you, it does not matter at all. The message is the same as it was tens and hundreds of years ago: you are persuaded to contribute money for the sake of some fantastic project, which supposedly will someday bring you billions of dollars in dividends. Gullible people for such projects are looked for in social networks. Adepts try to find more and more victims, because for each lost soul they receive their percentage.

How to be?
High-tech pyramids are designed for older people. It is easy to impress them with fairy tales about saving the world, promises of a happy life for children and grandchildren, new technologies, but it is difficult for them to understand the intricacies. Hence the advice: if you see that your mother or grandmother is on fire with the ideas of saving the planet, but for this you need to benefit from the money of some pseudo-engineering guru, conduct an educational conversation. Usually, such scammers flood the Internet with fake positive reviews, but if you wish, you will definitely find analytical information explaining the essence of a particular fraud.

Dream work
Today it is not only socially unprotected strata of the population that huddle. There are a dime a dozen crooks, for everyone there is his own. There are also guys who work on a large scale, but rather educated, well-read, experienced people are trying to deceive. The highest level of dubious skill, so to speak.

The divorce with the offer of the dream job is gaining momentum. Found on freelance exchanges. Times are not easy these days, so you can meet many applicants there. They are lured by an incredibly high salary (for example, $ 8000), all sorts of goodies and bonuses (a working MacBook, a smartphone, almost a personal car). A person who has taken the offer is competently interviewed by fake HRs and top managers. And now, when the dream job is almost in your pocket, and you imagine how, without straining, you will start earning like a happy American, it turns out that you first need to pay for some trifle like training courses.

How to be?
We talked about this scheme in detail in a separate article. There are also six tips on how to recognize deception and not get screwed up. In short, do not be lazy to look for information about the "employer" on the network and, of course, remember that no reputable company will require a potential new employee to pay for employment.

Pseudo-charity
Perhaps the most disgusting type of fraud. They used to hang out in metro passages, in markets and on the outskirts of shops, but then they happily migrated to the Internet, where it is even easier to “work”. There, you can easily adapt to the current circumstances in order to strike gullible users to the very heart.

As in the case of high-tech pyramids, it doesn't matter what the scammers focus on. They can ask for money to treat a sick child, build a temple or hospital, fight COVID-19 or poverty ... The main thing is to make a potential victim feel pity, sympathy, compassion and a desire to help. Having succumbed to emotions, a person takes out a card and lists "how much it is not a pity" to fraudsters.

How to be?
The main advice - no matter who and no matter how pressured on your emotions, try to keep a cool head. And it's better to transfer money directly through long-standing charitable foundations.