Researchers at Group-IB have found an extensive campaign in which criminal operators have created a large number of fake Facebook profiles that repost messages in which the scammers misrepresent themselves as tech support personnel from Meta (Facebook’s corporate parent). Researchers discovered some 3200 bogus profiles in twenty-three languages. By far most of the profiles were created in English, more than 90%, followed by Mongolian (2.5%), Arabic (2.3%), Italian (0.8%), and Khmer (0.6%).

Texting has taken over the global communication space; marketers and predators are seeing huge dollar signs. Email continues to be a reliable, but somewhat fraught with problems, alternative form of communication. In fact, the average user interacts, sends, and receives 25% more texts than email, and usage is skyrocketing. Most electronic device users have loads more unopened emails than texts.

A FBI bulletin highlights a new twist in the sextortion game: companies claiming to assist with addressing sextortion who use deceptive social engineering tactics to coerce victims into paying huge fees.

Harding, Shymanski, and Company is a major accounting firm that works with customers providing them with tax help and other financial services. The company recently suffered from a data breach that exposed many of its clients and led to fraudulent tax filings for the 2022 tax year. The company employs more than 142 people and has an approximate annual revenue of $28 million. A large number of individuals were impacted by this very serious data breach.

Read also: Bitrue crypto platform hacked for $23 million, Ryuk crypto broker sentenced to no jail time, and more.

Multinational payment processing firm Nexway has been rapped across the knuckles by the US authorities, who claim that the firm knowingly processed fraudulent credit card payments on behalf of tech support scammers. A Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaint argues that Nexway and its subsidiaries broke the law by helping scammers cheat money from unsuspecting consumers.

Earlier this month, state employees in the US state of New Jersey began receiving emails that falsely represented themselves as originating with the state’s attorney general. “At first blush, the communiques appeared to come from the state Attorney General's Office and sported a convincing njoag.gov domain.

SIM swapping is when a cybercriminal impersonates someone in order to convince a mobile carrier to activate a new SIM card. These bad actors use social engineering tactics, claiming “their phone” was supposedly lost, stolen or damaged, when in reality, it was never their phone to begin with. When a cybercriminal successfully SIM swaps, they can more easily steal someone’s identity because they can now receive their text messages and phone calls.

Back in 1939, Henry Wallace, the American Secretary of Agriculture, created the Food Stamp Program. It was designed to supply surplus agricultural commodities to American families in need during the Great Depression. People who received public assistance could get stamps that were then used to purchase food. The program underwent several iterations in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s until finally, in 1984, the first Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) system was introduced.

National Westminster Bank, the London-based bank familiarly known as NatWest, has warned its customers to be on the alert for emails pretending to be from NatWest, but which in fact are from scammers trying to bubble the unwary out of their savings.