Muscovites should be vigilant during the holidays, when scammers posing as public utilities employees stepped up their work. On April 30, Deputy Mayor of Moscow Pyotr Biryukov warned residents of the capital about this.
“Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for attackers, posing as employees of public utilities, to enter the apartments of Muscovites, most often the elderly, pensioners, and offer services to replace meters, check gas stoves,” he told reporters.
Biryukov recalled that all sudden checks are illegal. With such “checks” housing and communal services workers cannot come, but only people who often fraudulently try to quickly sell some expensive equipment to apartment residents. Often counterfeit devices can present a real danger during commissioning.
“Departure of specialists is carried out only at the request of citizens, the time of arrival is agreed in advance. Information about inspections is posted in advance on the information stand at the entrance and on the website of the organization that conducts it,” the Deputy Mayor noted.
On April 27, Kaspersky Lab cybersecurity expert Dmitry Galov said that online scammers are especially active on the eve of a long weekend like the May holidays. At this time, companies begin to send out a large number of promotional messages and special offers. Galov recommends that you be careful and pay attention to the site address before entering your bank card details on it.
On the same day, Angara Security specialists reported that scammers had come up with a new type of deception for users of gadgets with the Android operating system. They began sending out phishing emails asking them to invite their friends to participate in the lottery and receive a reward for doing so. Analysts indicated that this campaign is aimed at collecting money and bank data from citizens.
Earlier, on April 25, the press service of the Moscow Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia said that a fraudster lured more than 1.6 million rubles from an elderly Muscovite under the guise of an employee of a pension fund. Under the pretext of recalculating the pension, the attacker took possession of the details of the social card and codes from the victim’s SMS messages, after which she stole 1 million 630 thousand rubles from the pensioner’s account.
