"Affiliate programs" are an effective and popular
Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2025 7:20 am
Ozon and FACCT specialists conducted a joint study in which they reported that the most popular forms of fraud were online scams with fake prize draws on behalf of the marketplace, phishing authorization pages, purchase or return of goods. The authors of the study named advertising in messengers and social networks as the main form of promoting fraudulent schemes.
Employees of both companies senegal whatsapp resourcenoted that the sharp increase in the number of scam sites occurred in the second half of 2023 due to the growing popularity of "affiliate programs", which allowed attackers to attract more victims. Thus, in the first six months of 2023, 498 scam resources and almost 11.5 thousand phishing sites were blocked. For the same period in 2024 - more than 9,000 scam resources and more than 3.6 thousand phishing sites.
model among scammers. - The FACCT press service noted - The roles are strictly divided among its participants: there are program administrators, offer authors, and partners. This distribution of powers makes their work effective and allows scaling the fraudulent scheme. At the initial stage, the partner does not necessarily have to have knowledge of attracting traffic to referral links; he can count on help from other participants in the affiliate program. Marketplaces and product sales are the third most popular among fraudulent "affiliate programs", behind lotteries and cryptocurrency. We cannot name the exact date of the first "affiliate program", the oldest offer we found dates back to October 1, 2018, and it is still active."
According to Kai Mikhailov, Head of Information Security at Infozashchita LLC (iTPROTECT), the increase in the number of scammers is a combination of several factors. Firstly, in recent years, marketplaces have become extremely popular among Russian residents. Secondly, the automation of most of the processes of creating phishing sites, in which special chat bots participate and are generated according to the necessary criteria of scam activity, plays a major role. Thirdly, fraudsters have learned to successfully personalize phishing letters by using information from leaked personal data and electronic user databases, thereby increasing the likelihood of success.
"The main trick of many scammers is based on psychology. The user profile contains certain data - for example, a mobile phone number. When a client tries to make a purchase, he receives a refusal under the guise of an error. Then the attacker contacts the potential victim in a messenger, offers to repeat the purchase and asks to pay for the order, but not through the marketplace, but manually via a transfer. Thus, the user is left without the desired purchase and without money. As for marketplaces, it is important to remember that sellers will never communicate in chats or send links to pay for goods in private messages," said Kai Mikhailov.
Ozon press service specialists noted that a fraudulent site may be the spitting image of a real one, but differ in small details - for example, an extra letter in the address bar or a different domain zone. They noted that on the official site, the user can always change the filter and go to other sections, while scam resources are limited to one page. The marketplace actively cooperates with regulators and market participants to combat fraudsters and other threats, and it takes the information security service several days to block a site.
"We recommend that users pay attention to the website address and never follow links that are similar but different from the official ozon.ru. For example, in the address bar, instead of the usual ozon.ru, there may be ozonn.ru. If you do find a suspicious resource similar to Ozon, please send links to the support chat. We will process the request and block fraudulent resources," th
Employees of both companies senegal whatsapp resourcenoted that the sharp increase in the number of scam sites occurred in the second half of 2023 due to the growing popularity of "affiliate programs", which allowed attackers to attract more victims. Thus, in the first six months of 2023, 498 scam resources and almost 11.5 thousand phishing sites were blocked. For the same period in 2024 - more than 9,000 scam resources and more than 3.6 thousand phishing sites.
model among scammers. - The FACCT press service noted - The roles are strictly divided among its participants: there are program administrators, offer authors, and partners. This distribution of powers makes their work effective and allows scaling the fraudulent scheme. At the initial stage, the partner does not necessarily have to have knowledge of attracting traffic to referral links; he can count on help from other participants in the affiliate program. Marketplaces and product sales are the third most popular among fraudulent "affiliate programs", behind lotteries and cryptocurrency. We cannot name the exact date of the first "affiliate program", the oldest offer we found dates back to October 1, 2018, and it is still active."
According to Kai Mikhailov, Head of Information Security at Infozashchita LLC (iTPROTECT), the increase in the number of scammers is a combination of several factors. Firstly, in recent years, marketplaces have become extremely popular among Russian residents. Secondly, the automation of most of the processes of creating phishing sites, in which special chat bots participate and are generated according to the necessary criteria of scam activity, plays a major role. Thirdly, fraudsters have learned to successfully personalize phishing letters by using information from leaked personal data and electronic user databases, thereby increasing the likelihood of success.
"The main trick of many scammers is based on psychology. The user profile contains certain data - for example, a mobile phone number. When a client tries to make a purchase, he receives a refusal under the guise of an error. Then the attacker contacts the potential victim in a messenger, offers to repeat the purchase and asks to pay for the order, but not through the marketplace, but manually via a transfer. Thus, the user is left without the desired purchase and without money. As for marketplaces, it is important to remember that sellers will never communicate in chats or send links to pay for goods in private messages," said Kai Mikhailov.
Ozon press service specialists noted that a fraudulent site may be the spitting image of a real one, but differ in small details - for example, an extra letter in the address bar or a different domain zone. They noted that on the official site, the user can always change the filter and go to other sections, while scam resources are limited to one page. The marketplace actively cooperates with regulators and market participants to combat fraudsters and other threats, and it takes the information security service several days to block a site.
"We recommend that users pay attention to the website address and never follow links that are similar but different from the official ozon.ru. For example, in the address bar, instead of the usual ozon.ru, there may be ozonn.ru. If you do find a suspicious resource similar to Ozon, please send links to the support chat. We will process the request and block fraudulent resources," th