Realistic Scam and How to Detect Them

Background

As our digital world has become more and more advanced, unfortunately so is the dark side of the digital world. New ways to con unknowing people such as ransom-ware virus and spear phishing are rampant. Even the good old scam has become more elaborated, just few days back I saw a security camera recording on ATM machine showing how two seemingly random strangers actually work together to swap a debit card and get pin code from the victim separately. 

In this article I am going to discuss another  very common and can be highly elaborated and realistic Facebook scam. If you are interested with the ATM machine scam that I talked about, I have linked the video at the end of this article

Facebook Scam

Most of the Facebook scammers have a common goal: either to scam you for your money or blackmail you in anyway they can. Lately, the scam has become so much more elaborated and realistic that you could not tell whether the person is a scammer or genuine person. They will do whatever it takes to let your guard down and believe that you are establishing a genuine relationship. Here are some sample list of their steps and how to evaluate whether its a scam:

1. The Account is Not New

The scammer uses a Facebook profile that dates back to a year ago or even more. It is very possible that he has a pool of Facebook profiles that have been "groomed" since a year ago.
    The profile might have one or more of the following that will convince victims that the profile is of a genuine person:
  • Old timeline posts, regular posts over extended period of time
  • Pictures with simple comments nothing fancy or sexually explicit comments.
  • Regular and very down to earth pictures, nothing glamorous
The profile on the left is a profile created by a scammer pretending to be a Korean model. I would like to point out some example of oddities to watch for when evaluating such profile:
  • Even though the posts are dated back to months ago, the comments are recent.
  • Profile claims to be a Korean model, however not a single Korean language is found in the profile.
  • Lack of likes for a good looking "Korean model"




The last point might be crude but in reality, a model should have thousand of likes, as a sample here is a profile picture from a very cute and beautiful girl that I actually know in person, take note at the amount of likes she received, and she is not even a model.

2. Realistic Chatting Experience

The scammer will befriend you and chat with you as if "she" is a genuine friend. This is part of the long term goal of influencing you to drop down your guards and scepticism. Therefore you might be chatting with "her" for days and weeks before "she" eventually make the "move".

    Some samples of such chatting experience:
  • "She" will listen to your stories, make comments and complains.
  • "She" will neither reply you all the time nor quickly.
  • In the case of non native English speaker, "she" will pretend to have broken English.
While it is almost impossible to evaluate whether a person is genuine or not in this scenario, there are several traps that we can use:
  • If "she" is a non native English speaker, ask "her" to translate a sentence from "her" native language, use a complex sentence (in this scenario I use a lyric from BoA - Stay in Love) that google translate will fail horribly. Notice that in this example "she" fell for my trap and copy pasted Google translation as the answer.
  • If "she" is holding a relationship with you, send "her" a unique gift, something handmade, and ask "her" to take picture of herself with the gift.

Google Translation:


Real Translation:

Confirmed with a real Korean friend:



3. The Final "move"

Eventually the scammer will make "her" final move. Each scammer will have different goals:
  • Some will try to ask you for a Skype session in which they will play a sexually explicit webcam porn with the hope that you fell for it and do some sexually explicit acts in front of your web camera while they are recording your acts on the background and later on using the recording to blackmail you. UPDATE: It seems that even if you don't do any sexually explicit acts in front of your web camera, they still record your face and use it in an editted video to blackmail you. 
  • Some will pretend to fall in love with you, then slowly ask for money to help "her" flying over to meet you, help sick parents, brother's school fees or "her" loan to loan sharks.
  • Others will try to make you download and install "applications" that are actually backdoor applications that will give them access to your computer and possibly all your data.

Bonus:

Earlier I promised to find and give you the video of new ATM scam, well here it is the video, unfortunately it is in Indonesian language, but I will summarise the event here in English.
  1. Person A installs a card blocker in the ATM.
  2. Victim A uses the ATM machine but her card stuck inside the card blocker.
  3. Person A pretends to come and help and pulled out the card.
  4. Person A quickly switch the card with a bogus card before returning the bogus card to her.
  5. Person A left the scene.
  6. Victim A continues using the ATM, but the PIN doesn't work now because its a bogus card.
  7. Person B pretends to come and help pressing the PIN.
  8. Person B found out the PIN number, and since the card doesn't work victim A feel no harm is done.
  9. Person B meet with person A somewhere else and withdraw the money using the real card and PIN.

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