Not only bank customers are the target of online scams, Instagram users are also currently being attacked. How to spot the scam and what to do about it.
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Scammers are currently trying to get hold of Instagram users’ data.
© Shutterstock.com/Maksim Shmeljov | Instagram
For Instagram users, the blue tick is a kind of accolade, a recognition of the account’s relevance. It is intended to confirm the authenticity of companies and public figures. And it is precisely this blue hook that scammers use in a new scam to get hold of Instagram users’ data. E-mails are currently circulating in English that claim to come from Instagram and inform the addressees that their profile has been checked and approved for a blue tick.
Under the term
phishing
(neologism of
fishing
, english for ‘fishing’) refers to attempts to impersonate a trustworthy communication partner in electronic communication via fake websites, e-mails or short messages. The aim of the fraud is z. B. to get personal data of an Internet user or z. B. to induce a harmful action.
(Source: Wikipedia)
Only a few final steps for verification are necessary, which can be carried out via a link in the e-mail. Of course, this email does not come from Instagram and the link leads to a login mask that is optically based on the Instagram login, but forwards the entered data directly to the scammers.
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They supposedly qualified for the blue tick.
© Consumer Center
For attentive Internet veterans, the mail is quickly recognized as dubious. The recipient is not addressed with their name or the name of the account, but only with ”
Dear User
” (Eng.: Dear User).
In addition, Instagram does not actively approach users to award the blue tick. This has to be applied for in the account settings.
Received a phishing email – what to do?
If you receive mail whose authenticity you question, you should under no circumstances click on any links within the mail. Instead, you can try to reach the supposed sender on an official channel to verify the authenticity of the email.
If you immediately recognize the email as a phishing email, you should delete it immediately. You can also warn other users about the scam by forwarding the mail to the consumer advice center beforehand. These regularly publish warnings about scams currently circulating. Simply forward the e-mail to phishing@ Verbraucherzentrale.nrw.
