Scammers use Google search to display fake service numbers

Fake customer service (SAC) phone numbers appear prominently in Google search resultsfacilitates the implementation of scams, as warned by Washington Post last week. In one case, the victim lost US$100,000, equivalent to R$548,000 at that day’s exchange rate.

For example, when searching for the SAC phone number of companies such as airline Delta in the United States and cryptocurrency broker Coinbase, the internet user You may come across these fake numbers displayed at the top of the search engine page.There is a chance of suffering great losses by searching for one of these.

This is what happened to an exchange customer. was persuaded to give his password when he called Coinbase SAC, which was shown during the callDuring the conversation, the scammer said that his account needed an update and ended up stealing some of his digital assets and dollars.

According to the publication, cybercriminals use optimization strategies to ensure that their fake pages appear at the top of Google. Moreover, They can pretend to be the owner of the original pages and request to change the phone number in the big tech database Without great difficulties, as shown in an experiment.

How to avoid this scam?

Call the company’s call center number One of the ways to avoid becoming a victim of scammers directly on the official website or in the appOther tips include searching the brand’s profile on social media and looking out for strange fonts and other errors when visiting so-called official pages.

This is also important Do not give out passwords, card numbers and other sensitive data when contacting SACs from phone numbers found on search enginesAsking for and insisting on inappropriate information is a sign that something may be wrong, the report said.

In the report, Google said that it analyzed several points, including the history of user recommendations, to decide whether the changes submitted to its business listing service were correct. The Mountain giant also said that He stated that he was working on improvements to job profiles..