With credit card criminals leveling up their genius, the numbers of credit card scams are bordering on ridiculous and the types of the same are distinctively threatening.
Recently, a tech scam in the façade of McAfee was found out, it was programmed to extract victim’s credit card details and personal data.
Unlike previous versions of McAfee scams which used an affiliate link to redirect the visitors to McAfee's website and if the visitor happens to purchase anything at the site, the criminals would get a commission as a result, this variant executes in a slightly different manner, let’s dissect it a bit – a series of forms will unfold as soon as the user clicks on the ‘Renew Now’ button, the first form that appears will ask for user’s credit card information and the form that follows will ask for user’s personal information.
The scam attempts to acquire victims’ name, address, city, state, card number, phone number, email, expiration date, zip and CVC (Card Verification Code). Once the victim finishes entering the aforementioned details, the page immediately secures a connection with another URL which is the storehouse of all the entered information.
After the information is successfully stored, the victim will be redirected to a page which flashes ‘Thank you’ and provides a number to be contacted if any help is needed while installing the software. When dialed, the call gets connected to a company which introduces itself as ‘Premium Technical Support’ and claims either to be partners with McAfee or McAfee itself.
The next thing the scammers (on the line) request for is to get connected to the system in which you wish the software to be installed.
On being connected, the scammers will blame the technical irregularities and will convince you to purchase the software via McAfee’s website. Notably, these fraudsters are not only piling money up through commissions on affiliate sales but also committing a serious fraud by stealing users’ credit card and personal information which can potentially be used by them to counterfeit credit cards or to fill fraudulent credit card applications posing as the actual owner of the card.
Effective safeguards against scam
If you find yourself to be infected by a credit card scam, here’s what you can resort to:
1) Get in touch with your financial service providers, even if your bank is not linked to your credit card, it’s recommended that you alert them.
2) To prevent further fraudulent transactions, change your passwords and unlink it from all the shopping sites it has been linked to, like Amazon or PayPal.
3) Keep a track of your account activity and recent transactions for a while.
4) To place a 'fraud alert' victims can call credit bureaus and FTC.
5) A police report can also be filed and to develop a recovery plan, a report with the Federal Trade Commission can be filed.
