Yandex named the most popular phone scam scenarios

In first place in popularity is a scheme in which the attacker allegedly offers the victim to renew the contract with the operator to continue the operation of communications or the Internet, for which he requires a code from an SMS message. In the general structure of fraudulent calls, this scenario represented 44%.

In 20% of cases, scammers used two-stage pressure on the user. The first call lets the victim know that an attacker is talking to them, after which a second call arrives, supposedly from a bank representative offering to secure the accounts after the scammer calls.

On the topic: Protection of data and personal information

Another 16% were taken by promises of criminals to issue or increase the benefits paid, increase the size of the pension or recalculate payments taking into account previously lost experience or data. In 11% of cases, scammers offered to unlock an account supposedly blocked due to suspicious activity, and in 5% of cases they offered to give an SMS code to supposedly deliver a letter.

Yandex also said that last year, the company’s automatic caller ID processed nearly 1.5 billion calls from unknown numbers, 800 million of which were unwanted calls, including fraudulent ones. Compared with 2023, the proportion of this type of calls increased by 16% and accounted for 56% of the total.