Scammers are always looking for new ways to target vulnerable people. Now they're taking to the skies.
The scammers are now lurking on social media, looking for posts from upset travelers dealing with flight cancellations and delays, and posing as airline customer service agents, the Federal Trade Commission warned in an alert.
“Most people can probably agree that there are few things more frustrating than airline delays or cancellations that leave you stranded at the airport,” the FTC said. “Whether the issues are the result of an unprecedented event like the Crowd strike glitch that grounded thousands of flights worldwide, or more common disturbances like weather delays, desperate travelers often turn to social media for help from the airlines.
“Opportunistic scammers know this, and they’re re lurking behind fake accounts trying to steal travelers’ information. The scammers ask passengers for a slew of information, like their booking confirmation number, phone number, or bank account,” the FTC said. “Or they send passengers to a spoofed site that harvests their personal information and use it to steal the passenger’s identity or rack up charges on their accounts.”
Cybercrime is the ‘fastest-growing crime'
“Cybercrime is the fastest-growing business on Earth,” Eric O'Neill, a national security strategist at NeXasure, a cybersecurity firm that offers advisory services, told USA TODAY.
O'Neill has predicted that by 2026, the cost of “dark web” cybercrime will exceed $20 trillion.
“In terms of GDP, that is No. 3 in the world and bigger than Germany and Japan put together,” he said. “Cybercriminals have emulated the best in the business − espionage agencies (aka spies) − to launch deceptive attacks that gain the trust of their target so that the criminal can coerce them into handing over their most sensitive data with a smile.” Cybercriminals “have mastered the art of inserting themselves into a crisis,” O'Neill said, and that included the Crowd strike outages, which caused flight delays and cancellations. “They use deceptive and impersonation attacks that prey upon a target’s fears or desire to believe a thing to be true.
“During the CrowdStrike crisis we saw countless scams where criminals would use imposter attacks that pretended to be airline support, Crowd strike support and various pretend vendor support to assist a target in escaping the crisis,” said O'Neill, a former undercover field operative for the FBI who was tasked with surveilling foreign and domestic spies and terrorists.
Scammers target people seeking help on social media
Scammers have tried to target people who use social media to try to engage an airline for customer service before, said Jason Rabinowitz, co-host of Flightradar24’s AvTalk Podcast. Flightradar24 is a global flight tracking service that provides real-time data on thousands of flights.
Rabinowitz had a series of posts on X in October highlighting fake accounts pretending to be airlines.
— CutC by yahoo.com
