Scammers Make Millions Off Social Media Platform Abuse
Social media and the abundance of platforms that offer related services have given people new and often amazing ways to connect and share meaningful experiences. The same tools and platforms, however, have also given crooks fertile ground for an increasingly diverse repertoire of scams.
Recent publications by security researchers and the US Federal Trade Commission show that scammers are making insane amounts of money from victims who fall for scams abusing social media. The US FTC published statistics showing that in 2021 alone, it recorded $770 million in reported losses from people who got scammed through some type of social media platform.
Not too surprisingly, one of the most popular social media platforms to run scams through turns out to be dating and romance apps and websites. However, now scammers and crooks are upping the ante and finding new, increasingly creative ways to bleed people dry of their savings.
One criminal outfit that has been running this type of scam is called CryptoRom. Originally named by Sophos security researchers, the CryptoRom outfit operated globally and targets victims across multiple continents.
The novelty in those scams comes from combining dating apps with fake crypto trading applications. Victims would generally become a lot more trusting if the offer to install a hot new crypto app comes from someone who appears to show romantic interest in them as well.
The apps are designed to look as trustworthy as possible but are really platforms entirely operated by the scammers. After victims are made to believe they are making bank and "winning" in the game of crypto, they are encouraged to make big investments using their own resources. Victims are toyed with even further, showing supposed "profits" in the fake apps.
However, as soon as they attempt to withdraw the fake money, they are told by the scammers they need to pay "tax" of roughly 20% of the fake profit. There are reports of people sinking their entire life savings into those schemes, lured in by the promise of easy profit.
This type of scam doesn't only hurt individuals who get reeled into them, they also hurt the trustworthiness of regular and legitimate platforms and apps that deal with crypto trading.
