Experts Said How Cybercriminals Make Money on Russian Gamers

One of the most popular fraud schemes involves buying or selling an account in online games. An attacker can offer an account, but after transferring funds for it, the buyer does not get access to it.

Experts advise using specialized platforms for buying and selling an account, which charge a commission of about 10% for their services.

If there is no such platform, but there is a forum dedicated to the game, the expert advises to study the user’s account and his rating on the forum as much as possible before selling or buying.

Gamers can also be deceived when buying expensive computer components, for example, video cards. Scammers create copies of popular online stores, in which the cost of components will be declared 2-3 times lower than the market price. The buyer most likely will not be able to return the money.

Another method of fraud is associated with the purchase of expensive goods, such as a game console through a private classifieds service. In this case, the buyer is offered to get an e-wallet on one of the legitimate services. His virtual card is allegedly linked to this account, which is used to make the payment.

The client transfers money to the wallet and informs the seller about it, after which he receives an SMS message with the virtual card data. However, the notification does not come from the service number, but from the phone of the scammers. So, the gamer makes the transfer to scammers and remains without money and the desired product.

Another method of fraud is connected with watching streams of other gamers. Scammers copy the broadcasts of famous players and add banners with ads for easy earnings to the video. By clicking on them, people get to the resources of scammers, where they lose money by providing their bank card details.

According to the expert, the solution to the problem in the game world could be the active development and use of escrow services, as it is used when selling domain names on the Internet.