With a new gaming season starting, experts from security firm Kaspersky have found hundreds of phishing pages, aimed at stealing PUBG Mobile accounts.
A multiplayer shooter, PUBG Mobile, has just started a new season, with new items, monsters and mechanics from another popular game, Metro: Exodus. As is often the case, fraudsters have not ignored such a good opportunity to capitalize on new gaming activity.
Kaspersky said it has identified no less than 260 phishing pages, offering users the chance to win new items. To get the prizes, users simply needed to submit their gaming accounts through their Twitter or Facebook profiles.
Once entry failed, users were requested to provide additional information, including the nickname they use in the game, their phone number and other personal details.
As a result, scammers not only collected social media accounts but these additional personal details — all in order to sell the gaming accounts for a profit.
“The attackers got themselves really well prepared for the start of the new gaming season. The pages we found were designed in a very convincing way, both in design and interface, that is normally very familiar to gamers,” commented Tatyana Shcherbakova, security expert at Kaspersky.
In order to avoid falling victim to this kind of fraud, Kaspersky has the following recommendations:
- Do not take part in lotteries, apart from the official games’ websites
- Check information via official resources. If a certain activity really exists, the game developer is unlikely to keep it a secret
- Still, these schemes can be very convincing — if you do not look closely, you may not recognize the deception. It is recommended that gamers use a security solution that simply will not allow you to visit phishing pages
