With stories that reach the headlines that involve avatars that steal passwords, chatbots of AI that are used through cybercriminals to create malware and the FBI that eliminates files from computers from thousands of American citizens, there is much surprising when it comes to it when it comes to it of cybersecurity. Or that thought. Then, I read about a 70 -year -old woman who parked her car for an appointment at the hospital and left to locate an involuntary player. This is what you want to know.
A 70-year-old woman was running late for her hospital appointment as she parked her car and scanned the QR code to pay the £3 ($3.85) parking fee. She was also required to enter her name and email address. So far, so annoying, After all, it was a lot easier and quicker when you could just drop a couple of coins in the slot, stick your parking ticket on the windshield and get on with your day. However, this woman’s day was about to get a lot more complicated and concerning. A second login prompt appeared on her smartphone, according to a BBC News report, and worried her payment had failed, she entered her details again. Having completed the hospital appointment and exited the car park, it wasn’t until she got home that things got even more worrisome: she had emails informing her that she had signed up for two gamer subscriptions. Although these were each for the same £3 ($3.85) amount, further investigation revealed this was a three-day trial, and the subscriptions would automatically renew at £17.49 ($21.85) thereafter.
“Unfortunately, QR code scams in car parks are incredibly common,” Dr. Martin Kraemer, a security awareness advocate at KnowBe4, said; they “target people in a rush to get to a shop, the restaurant, or just home. No one wants to spend a lot of time figuring out how to pay for parking.” As for online subscriptions, again, it is very common when it comes to fraudsters. “We often do not realize how many subscriptions we have,” Kraemer warned, “and a small amount going out of our accounts will often go unnoticed.”
An investigation revealed that the car park control company used QR codes in any of its parking lots, so the girl had only been scammed to log in as a player, but had paid her parking costs. Since then, fraudulent QR stickers have been removed. Regarding player subscriptions, the two organisations involved told the BBC that their sites had been compromised, that surveys were underway and that security disruptions had since been resolved.
“Fortunately, those scams are rarely sophisticated,” said Jamie Akhtar, CEO of Cybersmart, because “regularly depend on us not to pay too much attention to what we scan, which means that they are easy to counteract. ” These countermeasures include, said Akhtar, verify if the QR code seems to be false and pay close attention to the online page to which it takes it, in terms of being expected and legitimate. Better yet, use some other method to pay your parking lot that is very easy to use in a fraudulent attack. And if you are not a player, take a look at the subscriptions to games services to which you just subscribe soon.
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