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"For now, the cost and difficulty of stealing fingerprints or maps of palm veins in any usable format keep most fraudsters away. But as biometrics serve as a guardhouse for more money and other valuables, the systems will become more appealing targets. That means that research into anti-spoofing safeguards will be a critically important factor in the mainstream adoption of biometric systems, according to Ross."

"Indeed, this scam is far subtler. It works like this: fraudsters are able to register domains with characters plucked from various alphabets other than the default Latin script. When displayed, it's all but impossible to tell apart a Greek "O" from a Cyrillic "O" from a Latin "O," for instance."

"Bitcoin is stored on software known as a digital wallet that is secured through encryption. A password is used as a decryption key to open the wallet and access the bitcoin. When a password is lost the user cannot open the wallet. The fraudster had been sentenced to more than two years in jail for covertly installing software on other computers to harness their power to "mine" or produce bitcoin. When he went behind bars, his bitcoin stash would have been worth a fraction of the current value. The price of bitcoin has surged over the past year, hitting a record high of US$42,000 in January. It was trading at US$37,577 on Friday, according to cryptocurrency and blockchain website Coindesk."

"In 2014, Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19b, and promised users that it wouldn't harvest their data and mix it with the surveillance troves it got from Facebook and Instagram. It lied. Years later, Facebook mixes data from all of its properties, mining it for data that ultimately helps advertisers, political campaigns and fraudsters find prospects for whatever they're peddling. Today, Facebook is in the process of acquiring Giphy, and while Giphy currently doesn't track users when they embed GIFs in messages, Facebook could start doing that anytime"

""The social engineering type of attack does not tend to scale [up] easily given the time and effort required to succeed, and therefore is more often than not used by individuals rather than the 'call centre' approach of criminal enterprises," Goddard says. "The trigger to target an individual could be targeted, or opportunistic such as overhearing a conversation or getting access to sensitive or exploitable information like a picture or bank statement.""

"Shoppers are being deceived because social media platforms and messaging apps are not doing enough to prevent a "cottage industry of fraudsters" soliciting fake reviews, according to Amazon. Fake reviews have become one of the most persistent scourges of online retailers, and some analysts think that about one in seven reviews in the UK are not the real deal, with blame often directed at groups that proliferate on Facebook. Last year Amazon alone blocked 200m fake reviews. Dharmesh Mehta, head of the company's customer trust team, said this avalanche of misinformation was harming consumers, who were being "deceived about what products they should or shouldn't be buying"."

" A finance worker at a multinational firm was tricked into paying out $25 million to fraudsters using deepfake technology to pose as the company's chief financial officer in a video conference call, according to Hong Kong police. The elaborate scam saw the worker duped into attending a video call with what he thought were several other members of staff, but all of whom were in fact deepfake recreations, Hong Kong police said at a briefing on Friday. "(In the) multi-person video conference, it turns out that everyone [he saw] was fake," senior superintendent Baron Chan Shun-ching told the city's public broadcaster RTHK. Chan said the worker had grown suspicious after he received a message that was purportedly from the company's UK-based chief financial officer. Initially, the worker suspected it was a phishing email, as it talked of the need for a secret transaction to be carried out. However, the worker put aside his early doubts after the video call because other people in attendance had looked and sounded just like colleagues he recognized, Chan said."

"AI-generated voices are extremely convincing and can converse without the obvious repetitions and scripted lines, making a dream tool for fraudsters, marketers and political campaigns. The Federal Communications Commission sees the costs of all this coming and is banning their use in robocalls. "Bad actors are using AI-generated voices in unsolicited robocalls to extort vulnerable family members, imitate celebrities and misinform votes," said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in a press release. "State attorneys general will now have new tools to crack down on these scams and ensure the public is protected from fraud and misinformation.""

"The organisation is inviting anyone who thinks they've been targeted by a scam email to forward it to Re:scam, which will verify if it is a scam or not. It will then use its own email address to target any scammers it manages to detect.  "