What is Pig Butchering? Here’s how to safeguard yourself from online fraud

Here, the threat actors do social engineering and lure with good salary for simple tasks to gain trust of the potential victim.

Smartphones have become a very important part of our everyday life. It is almost impossible to leave home without the phone. With a few simple tap on the screen, we can hire taxi or order food and even create a presentation for the work on the go. Even if we forget the wallet, we can still be able to transact digitally on handset with less hassle. 

However, if you let your guard down, be prepared to pay a heavy price. There is increased cases of cyber frauds in India where in potential victims are lured with big promises and end up losing their hard earned money.

With each passing month, criminals are coming up with ingenious phishing techniques lure potential victims.

The latest new online scam doing rounds on the web is the ‘Pig Butchering’.

What is ‘Pig Butchering’?

This online fraud reportedly originated in China and the term takes inspiration a local proverb, where in  butcher feeds the pig with more food to fatten it and eventually kill it for the juicy meat.

Here, the threat actors do social engineering to gain trust of the potential victim. First step, they randomly send simple job offers with lucrative pay checks on WhatsApp or through Gmail. For instance, they will ask the user to join part time job of just posting reviews of a hotel or homestay on Google. Or post product reviews on e-commerce firms. 

They will offer good money and slowly gain the victim’s trust.

Then, they move to the next phase, they will ask him/her to invest in some cryptocurrency trading platform. Again, here too, in a short time, they will allow the victim to invest money and take it back with good profits.

Then, in the final move, they will ask the user to invest in big amounts ranging in lakhs, so that they can double their investment in less waiting time. With a lure of commission, they also try to coax the victim to ask their friends and family to invest in the cryptocurrency platform. More the people join the club, more the commission the main victim gets.

Once people invests the big amount, criminals running the cryptocurrency platform become incommunicado. And, it's almost impossible to get back the money, as threat actors using mule bank accounts to transfer money quickly in to multiple accounts and make it difficult to trace the money.

Here are tips on how to safeguard yourself from Pig butchering scams:

1. Never trust any job offers on email and WhatsApp and other social media messengers and platforms from unknown numbers, particularly if it is from an international zone codes

2. No matter how big the salary offer is, please beware of such mails. 

3. If the mail is from a company which you never applied, just ignore and move on

4. Always look for spelling mistakes in the message, as most professional companies send offers with correct spellings and grammar. And, criminals always struggle to construct sentences correctly.

5. Also, never ever click any link from an email or messages sent from unknown people 

6. Never download app from a website. Always install apps from Google Play, Apple App Store or Microsoft Windows store

7. Never ever invest money on people you never met in person. It's simple as that to avoid losing money to strangers

8. Don't be greedy. No matter how big the return people promise to offer you, just don't send money. It is definitely not coming back.

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