The guide to avoiding cyber scams: what are the most common scams and warning signs

Artificial intelligence’s ability to generate text, images, and videos has brought a series of challenges to distinguishing the legitimacy of content. In this context, cyber scams have lowered the barrier to entry for fraudsters: it is now much easier to create a fake bank email, replicate a tech support voice, or create a video on social media to lure people into a fraudulent investment.

Because of this, the prejudice that the elderly are the most vulnerable age group is beginning to crumble: nowadays, any user of any age can be an attractive target. And many of the so-called “digital native” generation don’t even know what two-factor authentication is (see below, or here).

In Argentina, some classic scams have been circulating for years: the fake Argentine Post Office package, calls or messages in the name of ANSES (National Social Security Administration) or PAMI (Comprehensive Medical Care Program) offering supposed benefits or urgent procedures, and the deception of the fake bank or Mercado Pago employee who alerts users to a suspicious transaction, tricking them into handing over passwords or transferring money. To all this must be added the constant theft of WhatsApp accounts, an application highly coveted by scammers to solicit money from friends and family.

During the last year, these types of scams not only persisted but intensified. Banks such as Galicia in Argentina registered an 83% increase in the total number of digital fraud cases compared to 2014, while scams associated with advertisements and fake social media accounts increased by 21%. Incidents linked to “infostealers,” a type of virus that installs itself on phones or computers to steal passwords and accounts, grew by 213% year-on-year.

Applications like Mercado Pago have detected that 8 out of 10 complaints they receive are related to transfers sent to accounts at other banks or providers, revealing a pattern in cybercriminals’ money movements: quickly moving funds between platforms to hinder traceability.

And a large part of the problem stems from how central cell phones have become in daily life. “We have to understand that a person has a digital identity, which is reflected and managed by the vast majority of people today through their cell phone. Therefore, this device must be protected with the same care as an ID, a house deed, or a rental agreement. Would you let someone mess with your house deed, fold it for origami, or write on the edges? No? Well, you have to think about your phone in the same way,” Teno, an Argentine tech researcher who works on cybersecurity and communications, told Clarín.

Here are some tips to stay alert and avoid falling into the trap, from five top-level specialists in Argentina, both industry professionals and independent experts.

Scams and targeted sectors: the elderly aren’t the only ones
Passwords, one of the industry’s weak links that still lacks a widespread alternative solution. Photo: Shutterstock

“Today, criminals don’t attack technology, they attack people, appealing to urgency, fear, or the promise of a benefit,” Pedro Adamovic, Chief Security Officer (CISO) of Banco Galicia, told Clarín.

In this regard, Adamovic asserts that “the landscape of bank scams in Argentina is evolving toward increasingly credible, personalized, and difficult-to-detect social engineering schemes, in many cases enhanced by the use of artificial intelligence tools.”

Social engineering is the practice by which a scammer or cybercriminal convinces a user to hand over personal information. The most typical example is the one-time login password or code that many platforms send via email or SMS. In most cases, this is the gateway to cyber fraud and, in many instances, even large-scale cybercrime.

For this reason, banks always remind customers that “the bank will never ask for passwords, PINs, or tokens via WhatsApp, SMS, email, or phone calls,” Adamovic points out.

Regarding the elderly as a frequent target, Federico Varela, head of security at Santander Argentina, notes, “Today we see that, especially among senior citizens, the most frequent frauds are so-called guided scams. In these cases, a criminal impersonates a trusted entity, such as a bank, a digital wallet, or a service company, and, through deception and a sense of urgency, induces the person to transfer money to a third party or even take out a loan.”