There are many ways to be socially engineered and phished, including email, websites, social media, SMS texts, chat services, phone calls and in-person. These days, it is hard to sell something online, date or rent a vacation home without being scammed. Scams are everywhere! If there is a way to communicate between two parties, some scammer will try to take advantage of it.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has published a data spotlight outlining the most common text message scams in 2022. Below are the top five text scams reported by the FTC: Phony bank fraud prevention alerts were the most common type of text scam last year.

If you read the news, you’ve encountered the term “Magecart” multiple times in recent years. The term refers to several hacker organizations that use online skimming methods to steal personal information from websites, most frequently customer information and credit card details on websites that take online payments.

A survey by PasswordManager.com has found that one in three job seekers has fallen for, and responded to, fake job scams over the past two years. “Nearly 4 in 10 respondents, all of whom have searched for a job within the last two years, say they’ve encountered job postings that turned out to be a scam,” the researchers write.

You’re in your favorite coffee shop, which you’ve frequented for years. The barista knows your order by heart – a medium, iced, sugar-free vanilla latte with soy milk. As you pay for your coffee, you casually chat with the staff about the weather, completely oblivious that you’ve just been the victim of fraud.

The French government is taking a stand against the increasing threat of digital warfare. Publicly accusing Russia of conducting an extensive online manipulation campaign, France is fighting back against typosquatting of major media outlets and the French Foreign Ministry. The goal of these fake websites is to spread disinformation and confusion about the ongoing war in Ukraine.

A phishing campaign is using hyperlinked images in order to trick users into visiting malicious sites, according to Jeremy Fuchs at Avanan. The emails contain images that offer gift cards or promotions for Delta or Kohls. “Obfuscation is a gift to hackers,” Fuchs says. “It allows them to pull off a magic trick. It works by hiding the true intent of their message. In this case, it’s a picture. The picture is meant to entice the user to click.

Today, the FBI alerted warned against a new even more disgusting type of sextortion. Previously, these schemes involved coerced or stolen digital material, but now some criminals are using technology to create explicit content from innocent images or videos found online. This information comes from today's alert by the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).

Forced verification fraud and deepfake fraud are on the rise in the US and Canada, according to researchers at Sumsub. Pavel Goldman-Kalaydin, Sumsub’s Head of AI & ML, explains that forced verification involves bypassing biometric data checks.