These online romance scams are '‘hacking’ the victim’s emotions' -- to the tune of $143 million lost in dating-related fraud last year.
Love & Money is a MarketWatch series looking at how our relationship with money impacts our relationships with significant others, friends and family. Federal authorities on Thursday announced an indictment charging 80 people with stealing at least $46 million through a network of schemes that targeted businesses, the elderly and anyone looking for love online. Most of the defendants are Nigerians, the Associated Press reported. “We believe this is one of the largest cases of its kind in U.
‘These kinds of romance scams are very targeted social engineering attacks, effectively ‘hacking’ the victim’s emotions, rather than trying to perform a technical assault.’ —Nathan Wenzler, senior director of cybersecurity at Moss Adams “These kinds of romance scams are very targeted social engineering attacks, effectively ‘hacking’ the victim’s emotions, rather than trying to perform a technical assault,” Nathan Wenzler, senior director of cybersecurity at Seattle-Wash.
Case in point: A woman came across a man on dating app Tinder claiming to be a U.S. Army captain and quickly fell for him. He had promised to take care of her and her children, according to a report from Gizmodo, if he could just have money to get home. By the time she realized she was being swindled, she had sent him more than $700.
Helped by data breaches and social media, these attacks are becoming more common in part because scammers are better able to find information about the victims online in advance and personalize their swindling efforts, Wenzler said. Data breaches have been soaring in recent years, with more than 1,300 in 2018 compared to just 200 in 2005.
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