Love is still very much in the air as a cyber-attack theme, according to email security company Tessian.
A survey carried out by the company found that nearly a third of people (32%) surveyed in the United Kingdom and the United States had been targeted with a romance scam in the past 12 months.
Tessian said the figure represented “a significant increase” over the 18% of people in the UK and US who reported being subjected to an attack of this kind in 2020.
“Isolating the US, 43% said they had received a romance fraud scam – up from 29% in 2021 – and in the UK, 14% said they had been targeted by romance scammers – up from 8% in 2021,” said researchers.
In 2021, cyber-criminals used various communication methods to deliver fraudulent virtual arrows from Cupid’s bow, including social media, email, and SMS.
“When we asked which platforms they had received ‘romance’ messages on, personal email ranked top with 51% of respondents saying they had received fraudulent phishing emails from ‘love interests’ via this channel,” wrote researchers.
Half of the respondents said they had received messages via Facebook, while 45% had been targeted over text messages. Instagram was also a popular channel, with 43% of respondents saying that they had been targeted via the app Read more: https://bit.ly/3BmFGjG