2025-04-17 13:26
publication
2025-04-17 13:26
Cybercriminals are increasingly using the image of famous people, including politicians in online advertising, to prompt to participate in false investment programs – warns the Ministry of Digitization. In 2024, over 50,000 were identified. domains offering false investments.
The department of digitization has noted that internet platforms offer an range of advertising services, and the potential of these tools was also noticed by cyber criminals. They are more and more boldly using them to distribute content that is to make users to participate in fake investment programs. In the pre -election period there are advertising in which the heroes are politicians.
MC explained that this type of advertisement is prepared to look credible and resemble articles or video materials from well -known information portals. If we enter the page prepared by fraudsters, they will offer us an extremely profitable and safe investment, e.g. in funds, state treasury shares or large technology companies.
The ministry described what this type of practice looks like. The “victim” must complete the contact form, after which the representative of the company responsible for false offers contacts by phone and urges it to make a transfer to the investment. “Of course, the money is not invested, but transferred to the account of criminals, and no profits never go back to the user,” the ministry emphasized.
She added that in 2024 such incidents intensified. Only in the first quarter of last year the CERT Polska team identified nearly 14,000 domains offering false investments, and in the whole year there were over 50 thousand. Over half of all fraudulent pages that hit the list of warnings in 2024 are those associated with the described procedure.
“This year this trend persists, but fraudsters improve their methods of action and in commercials even use the images of candidates in the presidential race,” said MC.
The ministry appealed to remember that if an offer seems extremely beneficial, it may not be real.
“Keep vigilant, if you see the images of famous people in the advertisement, the logo of large institutions. The photos used do not have to indicate that these people or companies really promote this offer, so always check the source of information. Do not provide your data if you do not want them to get to the hands of cheaters and do not continue to share such offers, if you do not want to expose your friends to potential losses. But first of all react. CERT Polska, using the form at: https://inDent.cert.pl/DOMENA. ” – advises Mc.
The link to the fake page can also be reported to CERT Polska via the MOBKitan application by selecting the “Safely online” service. It is worth reporting to the portal administrators.
“This is an important step, because although we undertake a number of actions that are to protect Poles from the effects of cyberbags, the fight against this procedure hinders the insufficient reaction of advertising platforms to fraudulent content. In particular those with the largest ranges belonging to technological giants such as Meta (Facebook, Instagram) and Google,” said the resort.
More information on the threat described can be found in the analysis “Advertising fraud on large internet platforms” published on the Cert Polska website. (PAP)
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