Scammers impersonated one of Britain's top cyber crime chiefs in a phishing email scam involving a fake £5 million robbery, spy agency GCHQ has warned.
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A record number of scams have been removed from the internet as part of a program to protect people from fraud and cybercrime.
The National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) says it removed a total of 2.7 million scams, illegal domains , and phishing services in 2021 – almost four times more than in 2020.
See also: NHS: Employees' email accounts hacked and sent phishing messages
The surge in takedowns comes as the NCSC – the cyber arm of GCHQ intelligence agency – has expanded operations designed to remove malicious online content. These include fake celebrity endorsement scams, fake blackmail emails, undelivered delivery scam messages and a wide range of fraudulent and malicious websites.
One email scam even involved scammers claiming to be the NCSC's chief executive, Lindy Cameron, telling the potential victim that the NCSC had recently stopped a £5 million theft and to respond with personal details to get their money back. The scam was taken down by the NCSC.
The NCSC also removed more than 1,400 NHS-themed phishing campaigns over the past year, as cybercriminals tried to trick people with fake messages about the COVID-19 and vaccination certificates.
Many of the scam websites and emails are designed to steal basic personal data from victims, such as usernames, passwords, contact information , and banking details.
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Not only can cybercriminals exploit this information to steal money and information from personal accounts , but they can use this stolen information to commit additional fraud – such as taking out loans in someone's name – creating further problems for the victim.
Information source: zdnet.com
