Call and drop: phone scammers have come up with a new scam

According to Sergey Golovanov, a leading expert at Kaspersky Lab, the new scheme was invented in order to bypass identification systems. In this way, attackers try to force a potential victim to contact the criminals on their own.

“This is a new story, it was not a year ago. Criminals call and drop in order to deceive the automatic call filtering systems”, - quotes the expert RIA Novosti.

According to Golovanov, existing systems, such as the WhoCalls service, analyze calls, checking if this contact is in the user's address book. After each call, call identification services prompt users to indicate whether there is any suspicion of fraud in this case. If one of the users indicates the number as spam, then this will be displayed on the device screen in the future.

Today, over 60% of calls from unknown numbers are marked as spam, and about 6% of calls are fraudulent.

Russians are increasingly using filtering programs to protect themselves from malicious calls. Some devices have a built-in "Antispam" function, which allows the owner to block incoming calls from unknown numbers that are not included in the device's address book. Thanks to this service, scammers cannot reach their victims. However, the new technology of deception is based on the fact that attackers rely on users' curiosity.

Previously, no one thought that the victims themselves would start calling back the scammers. When such calls come in, the scammers immediately start using the usual social engineering schemes. Calling themselves bank employees, they try to extract confidential data from victims and steal money from their bank accounts. Experts advise to immediately stop communicating with any subscribers who appear to be bank security officers. To do this, it is enough to say: “Thank you, it’s not interesting” and just end the call.