Here are the Biggest Online Scams You Should Look Out For in 2021

Internet scams have been around since the very beginning of the internet, but the thing that people should always remember is that the malicious actors that are behind the various scams often change up their behavior. They do this to prevent people from being able to protect themselves against them, and because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up harming you, you might want to familiarize yourself with the scams that are occurring so that you can plan accordingly.

SecurityOrg conducted some research that revealed some interesting statistics about online scams. For one thing, 42% of people that use peer to peer payment apps such as PayPal have suffered from a scam in some way, shape or form. This is something that you might have experienced as well, since it is pretty common for people to pay for something through such a platform and to not receive the product that they paid for at all.

A lot of the scams that occur have to do with crypto as well, but it seems that crypto scams are somewhat less common than P2P transaction scams. A third of the people that have used crypto in the past reported being scammed, with the majority of these scams involving them putting their money into an exchange that was not altogether legitimate.

Another area where people often tend to spend a reasonable amount of money is in gaming and the like, and almost 50% of respondents said that they had suffered from a gaming related scam as well. This indicates that online scams are pervasive regardless of the medium, and that if you are making some kind of a transaction online there is a pretty decent chance that you would end up getting scammed in a really big way.

P2P payment scams also involved people sending money to the wrong recipient and then realizing that there was no real way for them to end up getting this money back. Hence, some common sense precautions should be put into place if you want to avoid being scammed. These precautions are not all that difficult to wrap your head around, and for the most part they are going to involve you making sure that you have all of the right details regarding the person to whom you wish to send any amount of money whatsoever.

Scammers are also trying to work around authentication codes and passwords by attempting to contact their victims and asking them to give up this code by pretending to be an individual that is acting in an official capacity. It is absolutely essential that you never give any such details to anyone at all, let alone someone that is calling you and asking for them.

The interesting thing to note here is that 64% of PayPal users said that they had lost money on the platform, which might mean that this oldest P2P transaction platform is the most susceptible to manipulation by various malicious actors that are currently out there.

Crypto scams often come from the general lack of information that people tend to have regarding this asset class. Crypto creators are known for pump and dump schemes wherein they advertise a particular currency and then run off with the money after having received investments.

Consumers need to be taught how to protect themselves, because a lot of these scams occur as a result of their own lax attitude towards their safety. The frequency with which these scams occur keeps going up, and unless someone or the other takes action they will just keep getting more and more common. What’s more is that the companies providing transaction facilitation for consumers need to patch themselves up too because cyberattacks are a common type of scam that occurs online.
Read next: The Key to Succeeding in Cybersecurity (infographic)
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