Criminals don’t give up. In these first two months of the year, 651 people in Colombia they have been victims of a new type of theft carried out by criminals using social networks, emails and even text messages.
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Users of these platforms receive emails and messages with links containing malicious programs that once they are opened, they steal your cell phone data.
“People have their applications such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and contacts linked to their phone, and what criminals do is steal all that information,” explains Mayor Nicolás Suárez, commander of the Sijín in Bucaramanga.
The first step criminals take is steal the profile photo of the person who owns the cell phone and access the contacts you have saved on your phone.
“They begin to send messages on behalf of that person: ‘Hello, look, save my new number, I’m’ Nicolás Suárez ‘and I changed my cell phone.’ Lcriminals wait a day after sending that message to steal ”, indicates Major Suárez.
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While all that happens, the owner of the cell phone does not know what is happening.
Sale of supposed dollars
One of the most used strategies is to simulate a difficult situation and offer cheap dollars to friends.
“The most usual thing is that they say: ‘Hey look, I had $ 10,000 left from a trip I did and I’m in a complex situation then I’m selling them cheaper ‘”, indicates the Major.
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People think they are talking to cell phone owners because criminals already They have access to all the information of that person and they have profiled friends. They know who are your frequent contacts and with whom you have the most interaction on social networks.
The friends of the cell phone owner they trust that they are talking to him and buy those dollars or they turn money that the criminals ask for, making them believe that they are in a difficult situation.
What to do if you are a victim of this modality
The victims of this scam realize because their own friends call them to tell them that they are posing as them, so from the Sijín they recommend that they follow these steps to stop the theft.
Changing the passwords of your social networks is useless, “the malicious software that is on your cell phone comes back and steals your data. You must publish what is happening on your social networks and download an antivirus to the cell phone but it should not be the ones that are free to download, you have to buy it, “says Mayor Suárez.
These antivirus can cost between 7 and 10 dollars, a little more than 30,000 pesos.
According to figures from the National Police, this modality is the most common in computer theft. In 2020, 35.2 percent of reported cyber crimes were due to identity theft.
The cities with the greatest impact on computer crime are Bogotá with 2,746 cases that occurred this year, followed by Cali with 517 and Medellín with 471.
The authorities are calling for citizens who are victims of this act to enter the virtual CAI on the internet and report the crime.
MARÍA ALEJANDRA RODRÍGUEZ
NATION EDITOR
TIMEOn Twitter: @mariasrodriguez
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