With the advent of Cyberspace, now predators are able to take their powers or their game to a whole new different level. This year, 110 cases of online scamming were reported to CERT in January, and in February of this year, another 213 cases of online scamming were reported to CERT. Last year, a total of 1609 online scams were reported to CERT. These criminal masterminds are extremely knowledgeable about how business is conducted.
These online scammers are remorseless, calculated, tech-savvy, manipulative, devious and have a complete lack of empathy. They prey upon the weak, the gullible, those who do not know what they are up against and those who seriously underestimate their prowess. In society there are so many who are naïve, who wallow in sad memories, who easily trust others to the point that they miss the red flags, who are so in need of financial assistance that they are blinded by their desperation and those who wear their heart on their sleeve. They stand no chance against the powers of these faceless online scammers! Their personal information will be obtained with absurd ease!
Today, Online Scamming is an ingenious way of stealing your money. Scammers easily manipulate the gullible into paying large amounts of money, pretending to be generous benefactors. Getting the bank details and personal information of the victim is their forte. Also romance and dating is yet another golden opportunity for them. The online scammer may even pretend to be in love with the victim, telling the victim what a wonderful person he/she is and that they are meant to be together.
Warning signs and protective measures
Charuka Damunupola
Nihal Thalduwa
Of course, this is a big red flag as the two have never met before in their lives. However, blinded by feelings of romance, the victim starts to share bank details and personal information with the online scammer until one day the victim realises that it was all a lie. However, romance is just one way of stealing your money. Sextortion is another way, where the girl or boy is blackmailed. He/she is tricked into sending photos that should never have been sent in the first place. As said before, these online scammers are extremely resourceful. Another way is where someone contacts you out of the blue, telling you that you have won some prize money. A really large sum of money. However, in order to get the prize money, you need to make certain other payments. And after that, you keep making payment after payment until one day, you realize that you have been the victim of a scam. And by then, it is too late. In both cases, if it is too good to be true, THEN it is too good to be true.
One of the worst types of online scams is identity theft. The kind of anguish and helplessness the victim goes through is awful because the victim can be completely ruined. Everything he/she has worked for, career and dreams, can go up in smoke overnight. Not only can you suffer financial loss, but how do you pick up the threads? How do you put your affairs in order again? Also, what happens if you are held responsible for the perpetrators’ actions and you are investigated by law enforcement agencies? What happens to your reputation?
Sri Lanka Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT), Coordination Center, Lead Information Security Engineer, Charuka Damunupola, pointed out that these days’ scams are taking place mainly through social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and also through Messenger. The first thing a scammer will do is to gain your trust. Remember, a scammer is devious. He/she may send you emails and messages offering you something that is lucrative, attractive, and profitable. This is what happens in the initial stage of a scam. It will be a very enticing offer to lure you in. The main thing to remember is that you have to be very selective about the information that you reveal about yourself. You may think that that piece of information is not significant, but the scammer may find it very valuable, and he/she will use it against you.
Expert advice
“The scammer wants your personal information. He/she will try as hard as possible to get information out of you. The first thing you should do is use the security controls or the security settings given by the platforms. They protect your privacy. For example, if you are using Facebook, do not reveal your sensitive information like your date of birth, your mobile number, or your address. When it comes to friend requests, you should be careful about accepting them. Also, do not reveal NIC details. Even posting your airline tickets can be risky. The Password is your first line of defense. You need to have a strong password. It needs to contain at least one uppercase, lowercase, special characters, and numbers. It also has to have a length of at least 10 -12 characters. The next thing is to have OTP enabled, a two-step verification enabled. Those are the main points when it comes to protecting your account. When it comes to the Messaging Apps, you have separate privacy settings there as well. Those are the main points you have to keep in mind when giving out any information,” said Damunupola.
Telling the difference between something that is legitimate and something that is a scam is tricky. Because these scammers are always trying to bait you. Sometimes they send you “phishing links”. You need to be very careful when it comes to the links you are clicking because these links lead you to “phishing websites” that steal your data.
“We got a case where someone received a link concerning an application for online jobs. These days we know that people are looking for online jobs. So the person had clicked that link, and that opened up a website. The website asks for a copy of the passport, NIC, CV, and birth certificate. Now these are very basic documents that are required to apply for a job. So the person has uploaded those documents to the website. At the end of the day, that website turned out to be an online job scam. That website had been set up to obtain information. That data is called Personal Identification Information (PII). That is very important when it comes to your identity. So if the scammer gets hold of your NIC copy, he can get a SIM card registered under that NIC, and if that SIM card is used for any illegal activity, after an investigation, you will take the blame for that illegal activity (because the SIM was registered under your NIC). Your identity was used by the criminal for illegal activities.”
So you need to be mindful of the URL and what they are asking you to do. For example, you need to be suspicious if they ask you for money during the initial stages. That can be an indication of where all of this is heading. Some of the most common online scams are online job scams, parcel return scams, gift/raffle draw scams, Pyramid/Ponzi scams, fake cryptocurrency scams, OTP scams, and romance/dating scams.
Emerging trends
“We have received several reports about online parcel scams, where you get a message saying that there is a return parcel that has not been delivered properly to your address because of an error in the address. So you need to click this link and pay a small sum in order to get the parcel. So when you click that link, it will direct you to a website that looks like a postal department website. There is a Rs.99 fee to get the parcel. So then you enter your bank card details. Then what actually happens is that they steal your bank card details. That is another type of scam. There are also gift card scams and raffle draw scams. Also during the past few years, we have seen an increase in Pyramid scams, Ponzi scams, and cryptocurrency scams.”
Stealing one’s identity is one of the worst things that can happen to you. When the Police start their investigations, sometimes an innocent man or woman will take the blame. The criminals always try to hide their identity. “Recently, we have discovered that some criminals are even giving out money just to rent out their online banking account. So the account is handled by innocent people. The victim is initially paid an amount of money to do the transactions. So the task of the victim is to transfer the money to the bank account of a third party. The transactions are all fraudulent. If something goes wrong, and if the Police conduct an investigation, the victim will have to take the blame. The victim had no idea of what he/she was doing. The victim was under the impression that he/she was doing an honest job. But unwittingly he/she was made a part of a criminal activity. The victim had no idea where the money was coming from. That is one aspect of identity theft,” pointed out Damunupola.
If it is happening in Sri Lanka, there can be a mobile number (of the perpetrator) involved or a bank account (if there are money transactions, you need to give the Police those account details). When you are lodging a complaint at a local Police station, make sure you are informing them about these details. Then the Police can proceed with the normal investigation.
Law enforcement
Catching the online scammers is the hardest part because they are extremely cunning. If another country is involved, then that is the hardest part because cyberspace is another world. We have no idea from where these scammers are operating from. Some operations are done from Nigeria. So there are limitations when it comes to doing the investigations. If necessary, the police may even contact Interpol to do further investigations.
“You need to be careful about what you are giving out. Do not give out sensitive information. You need to protect yourself,” he added.
Daily News also spoke to DIG of Police Crime Range and Police Spokesman, Nihal Thalduwa, who revealed that online scamming is a very complicated operation. It is a web of deception, and these are criminal masterminds. They have in-depth knowledge of business and technology. When the victim is ensnared, even he/she will not be fully aware of what is happening because the scheme is so elaborate. A Pyramid Scheme is one of those scams, where once you get to a certain stage in the scam, it is so complicated that you yourself do not know that you are in serious trouble or that you are caught in a dangerous web of deceit.
“When it comes to the Pyramid Scheme, these scammers make the offer as attractive, desirable, or as tempting as possible. What they say is that if you invest a certain amount of money, you can make a significant profit in a short time period, in a few days, a few weeks, or one month. There are well-known and reputable companies in the world who do online business. So posing as one of these companies, they (scammers) tell the victim that they are recruiting staff because they need to make sales, and that the staff that they have with them is not enough to do business. They tell the victim that they are offering people the chance to work from home. This is all contained in the message that they send to the victim. So people think that this is a legitimate company.
They (scammers) also tell their victims that they (victims) can make a good amount of money. Then what they do is they get your details. Then they send you an APP. But initially they ask you to deposit a sum of money before doing the business. Then they send you business. For example, they send you a request saying 10 television sets are needed. You think that the request is from a genuine customer/from the public. The APP also shows you where the stocks are. After you make the sales, you are paid a certain amount of money. Then they (scammers) send you a message saying: ‘You have done good work’. They then tell you -‘but if you invest more money you can make a greater profit because we will give you more business’. So now the victim deposits more and more sums of money. After that, certain other individuals (who are also duped) are brought into the plot by the scammer. And these individuals (who also don’t know each other) are also working for the scammer. It is all cunningly coordinated. So, the scammer ends up making a massive amount of money, and the victims are none the wiser about the true nature of the scheme. And then one day the APP stops working. After that, the scammer ensnares another victim,” explained DIG Thalduwa.
It is obvious that the scammer is moving his victims around like chess pieces on the board. DIG Thalduwa added that these scammers are always creating new schemes. “If you take certain online scams, they have features of the Pyramid scheme. Scammers are always looking at new ways to manipulate their victims. There was one outrageous scam involving the sale of glass cutter machines, an online business.
Ingenious tactics
A link appears with photos saying these machines are for sale. After clicking the link all the details appear with the price. But even though we exit, the scammer is able to gain access to our phone! So if I enter my bank details/information through this phone and engage in an online transaction (the scammer is alerted) then the scammer gets active and steals all my information. The scammer was able to enter the phone because the victim clicked the link! Then the banking information is stolen and some of the money is also gone. However, we don’t know who these scammers are,” he pointed out.
Can you believe how devious these online scammers are? This is why DIG Thalduwa points out that you need to think very carefully before you reveal any details because these fraudulent schemes are rampant. And these scammers will waste absolutely no time.
Hotel bookings are another kind of scam. The scammer tells the victim that there is a beautiful and picturesque hotel in a beautiful location and invites the victim to make an online booking. So the victim spends his/her money and makes that online booking (And when you call this hotel they even answer the phone). But when the victim and his/her family get to the location, they find that there is no such hotel. In fact, there never was any such hotel. By then, it is all too late.
There are laws against scamming and punishments, but from what DIG Thalduwa and Damunupola say, prevention is always better than cure. Because sometimes in the case of online scams, there is no cure. Do not reveal sensitive information and beware of links and malicious websites.
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If You’ve Been Caught in an Online Scam
- Remain Calm: Keep a clear head and avoid panic.
- Gather Evidence: Take screenshots of relevant information, URLs, and any communication related to the scam. Keep transaction receipts and record any threatening calls.
- Inform Your Bank: Notify your bank immediately if money has been involved. Freeze any relevant credit cards or accounts.
- Change Passwords: Secure your accounts by changing passwords and enabling two-step authentication where possible.
- Report to Authorities: Contact the Cybercrime Division of your local police force, such as the CID. They will investigate the matter.
- Seek Technical Assistance: Reach out to organisations like CERT for technical support. Their hotline is available 24/7 at 101.
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Five-Point Fight to Stay Safe Online
1.Sri Lanka has seen a surge in reported online scams, with criminals using increasingly sophisticated methods.
2.Scammers prey on the weak, trusting, and desperate, often using emotional manipulation and promises of easy money.
3.Common scams include romance scams, fake job offers, prize money scams, identity theft, and phishing attacks.
4.Be cautious about sharing personal information online.
5.If you believe you’ve been scammed, report it to the authorities.
