Brazil registers highest number of internet phishing victims – survey

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – In 2020, Brazil was the world’s most affected country by attempts to steal personal or financial data from individuals over the internet, a practice known as phishing. With this information, fraudsters harm victims in different ways, either by accessing funds or deceiving others by impersonating them.

The percentage of Brazilians who have tried to open data theft links at least once represents 19.9% of the country’s internet users. Second in the ranking of countries comes Portugal (19.7%), followed by France (17.9%), Tunisia (17.6%), Cameroon (17.3%), and Venezuela (16.8%).

The survey was conducted by Kaspersky information security company on phishing and spam practices worldwide. According to the company, between February and March last year the number of attacks grew 120% in Brazil.

The frauds were performed by means of links in messages or fake websites, which pretend to be well-known companies, such as large online retail chains – Amazon and others.

The most common examples were scams in which criminals sent messages posing as these stores and asking the victim to contact customer communication or support areas, with systems in place to steal data from the users involved.

Communication apps, particularly WhatsApp, have become the main channels for these scams. Users received messages with promised prizes with links leading to fake websites designed to steal the victim’s information.

Pandemic

The pandemic context also led scammers to submit fake surveys or messages announcing prizes or financial aid to small and medium-sized businesses.

In Brazil, the scam attempts involved several aspects related to the pandemic, such as applying for emergency aid from the federal government, registering for the vaccine, and using the recently launched PIX system.

“Despite the high rate, an important drop compared to 2019 is noted. That year, over 30% of Brazilians had tried at least once to open a link that led to a phishing webpage, ten percentage points more than in 2020. This shows that the campaigns and alerts regarding this type of scam have made people more aware, but it doesn’t mean that we don’t need to evolve, because the statistics remain very poor,” says Fabio Assolini, senior security analyst at Kaspersky in Brazil.

Another method employed by fraudsters was blackmailing users. This can occur with threats to release certain data or an alleged recording of the victim engaging in behavior that could impact their image, such as watching pornographic videos.

The report recorded blackmailing cases against companies too. Scammers demanded payment under the threat of conducting a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, claiming to have the companies’ confidential or strategic information.

The most frequent targets of these attacks were online stores, with 18.12%. They were followed by global internet gateways (15.9%), banks (10.7%), social networks and blogs (10%), and payment systems (8.4%).

Spam

The report also analyzed the mass messaging practice known as spam. In 2020, this accounted for 50% of email traffic. However, the result points to a 6.14 percentage point drop compared to 2019. In total, 183.4 million malicious attachments were sent last year.

The country sending the highest volume of spam messages was Russia, with 21.27%. Next come the United States (10.47%), Germany (10.97%), and China (6.21%). Brazil accounted for 3.26% of such attacks.

Precautions

To prevent these scams, taking precautions is essential. Most importantly, one should not click on links in e-mail messages, SMS or social networks sent from unknown individuals or organizations.

If you are going to click on a link, remember to confirm the website you are being directed to. If you are not sure that the website is safe, it is advisable not to enter personal information, particularly financial details – credit card number, for instance.

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