During the summer, fraudsters change their target audience. While adults are busy with work, children spend more time online and in games. This results in an increase in cyberattacks on children and teenagers, with the criminals' goal remaining the same: to gain access to accounts, devices, and, in the most dangerous cases, to parents' money.
Fraudsters target popular games among children, such as Minecraft, Roblox, and Counter-Strike, operating through in-game chats, Telegram channels, and videos on TikTok and YouTube. The main schemes used by fraudsters include:
- Free currency or rare mod: Children are offered to click a link to receive free in-game currency or a unique item, but the site is designed to steal their login and password.
- Tournament with prizes: An invitation to a gaming tournament requires sending an account recovery code, allowing fraudsters to take over the account.
- Earn money just by playing: Offers of money for testing a new game or registering on a social network, leading to the extraction of money from the child or their friends.
- Admin requires verification: A fraudster posing as a server administrator accuses the child of cheating and requests them to download a special program for 'verification', giving the fraudster full control over the computer.
IDBank advises parents to explain to their children that offers of free currency from strangers are almost always scams, not to download files from game chats, and to enable two-factor authentication for all gaming accounts.
