Telephone scammers who trick people with social engineering have changed the way they work. Among their methods appeared calls, allegedly from the credit bureaus.
“They inform the subscriber that they have received three or five requests for his credit history from the largest banks. When the victim objects that she did not submit any applications for loans, the pseudo-employees of the bureau suggest that someone is trying to get loans in her name right now”, - RIA Novosti quotes a message from the United Credit Bureau.
After that, the psychological processing of the client begins: the attackers begin to find out from him whether he has recently lost documents and find out in which banks he keeps his savings. After that, they promise to secure the client's accounts and transfer the data to the accomplices from the alleged "security service" of the bank. They call the victim back and assure that an application for an illegal loan has been received in her name.
Fraudsters warn the victim that it is possible to cancel the disbursement of funds requested by the fraudsters only through performing “mirror actions”. To do this, you need to independently make an online application for a loan and inform the "bank employee" of the codes received in the SMS. As a result, the credit taken by the victim goes to the accounts of the scammers.
Experts assess the new type of fraud as a “win-win” for fraudsters: today every second Russian has an outstanding loan, and almost all residents of the country have experience of applying to banks for borrowed funds.
Fraudsters call some clients on behalf of the credit bureaus and ask them to urgently repay the loan, otherwise "the credit history will be damaged forever". At the same time, in order to transfer money, they dictate to the victims not bank details, but their personal details.
Sometimes fraudsters go further than calling: they create fake websites that offer borrowers for money to "improve or remove" their credit history. For their services, they ask from 30 to 300 thousand rubles. As a result, the person simply loses money.
Financial security professionals warn against trusting financial phone calls: in fact, real credit bureaus never call customers.