14-R.5.1

Page 70

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If you click it, you will regret it.

Maya Taja, a final year engineering student, was looking for camera accessories online when she came across an advertisement on a social media app last June.

When she clicked on the link of the website, she got a message on her social media.

According to Maya, a person named Steve Dan got in touch with her and informed her about the accessories.

The man made her trust him and requested the total amount of money to make the shipment.

As she was aware of the ongoing cybercrime incidents around, she agreed on paying half of the money, $2 ,000, through online payment.

The man sent her the tracking ID for the shipment along with a link.

When she checked the link, there was no problem about that because it was really showing the parcel's path.

The parcel had set out from the United Arab Emirates, and by the next day, it had already reached her country according to the information on the link.

However, the seller demanded the rest of the amount because of safety concerns.

As everything about the website looked real, Maya believed in him and transferred him the money.

When she checked the link again, she saw that she needed to pay another $1 ,000 for tax.

She got shocked.

When she called the man, the man said that that money would be refunded as soon as she got the parcel.

At that moment, she realized what had happened, got out of her dormitory, and went directly to the police to verify the website.

The police froze the bank accounts of the accused immediately before he withdrew the money.

I was lucky that I realized it before I lost all my money, said Maya.

On August 8, 2022, Louisa back received a late night DM on Instagram while she was tapping through stories at home.

She thought it was from Instagram because it had the original logo, so she thought it was real.

The message said she had enough followers to get a blue tick.

It then asked her to click on a link to activate the status.

Unfortunately, she did so, and one of the first questions it asked was her credit card number.

Luckily, however, Instagram detected and tagged the activity as suspicious, and it immediately shut down Louisa's account.

Louisa could no longer access her account, but the hackers, or rather, the fraudsters, were after more data.

Almost instantly, she received a WhatsApp message, and it was demanding money.

Louisa then blocked the number and created a new account so that she could save her other personal data from the criminals.

She didn't use her previous account from then on.