– Don’t press them – Dagsavisen

In recent weeks, links to an article apparently about the disappearance of a little girl have been shared repeatedly in an unknown number of groups and pages on Facebook.

Along with a picture of a light-haired girl in a pink jumper, the title of the article is most often “Girl, 8 years old, missing overnight after not coming home from school”. The Norwegian person who apparently shared the article likes to write a few words along with the link, and this is where you smell the fuse. Because the spelling is not quite as it should be: “I can’t even imagine how difficult this must be for dla rodzini”. The last two words are also Polish and mean “for the family”.

Another article tells of yet another allegedly missing girl, this time an unnamed 14-year-old who is said to have been on a date but never returned. The photo shows a selfie of a fair-haired teenage girl lying on a pillow.

Other regulars are articles about young women who have been fired from McDonald’s and become homeless. But, miraculously, they have managed to become very rich in cryptocurrency.

Hijackers

– Just make fun of it all, says supervisor Rune Fimreite in the Nettpatruljen at the West police district.

– The whole purpose here is to get people to leave personal information, which is misused the moment they press “enter”, he continues.

According to adviser Nourdin Ben Karroum at the Norwegian Center for Information Security (NorSis), these are typical examples of spam and phishing.

– These are fake articles that try to lure you into clicking on the link. Instead of reading the case, you are sent to a fake page that looks like Facebook’s login page, where your login information is stolen by the scammers if you fill it in. This is how the fraudsters get your username and password, and can hijack your Facebook account, he explains.

With a hijacked account, the fraudsters can do a lot of damage.

– They pretend to be you and contact friends on the friends list. From them they can ask for money, or trick them into giving them access to their Facebook account. There have also been cases of extortion, says Karroum.

At the same time, the fake article is spread further from the hijacked account, and new fraud victims are on the hook.

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Check carefully

Recovering your Facebook account can be a lengthy process.

– The fraudsters can set up two-step authorization, change the email and phone number associated with the account, and then it becomes very difficult to get it back. Some choose to simply have it deleted and rather start a new account, says the NorSis adviser.

To avoid being scammed, his advice is to always have two-step verification on and be critical of links and posts that forward you to another page. Take a closer look at the spelling in the Facebook post, and check what the address of the link is. If it seems suspicious, it is best to steer clear. If you have seen the same post repeated in several groups or pages, it is a sign of spam. Often it is also lured with incredible stories:

Lucrative business

Police chief Fimreite’s advice is simple and straightforward:

– Do not click on them.

He is well aware of so-called investment fraud, where victims are tricked into buying fake cryptocurrency with incredible profits.

– Sure, you have to earn a fortune in two days. And it often seems believable too. But people need to exercise healthy skepticism about such promises, and be more aware of where they leave personal information. It’s almost better to be paranoid rather than gullible.

Because the only people who get rich are the backers, adds Fimreite.

– Norwegians are extra vulnerable, as we have many values ​​and are a highly digitized society. Then many become easy targets for fraudsters. These are organized and cynical networks on a large scale that operate from all over the world. In some cases, we have seen that online fraud is more lucrative than drug sales for them, so that says something about the large sums involved.

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