The Bank of Russia conducted an annual survey and found out who most often becomes a victim of cyber fraud. In 2024, every third of 10 respondents faced various types of financial fraud, 9% of them lost money.
Cyber scammers can deceive anyone, but most often their victims are active users of banking services aged 25 to 64. However, recently more and more elderly people (over 65 years old) have also fallen into their networks.
In 2024, the majority of fraud victims were working women with an average income and secondary education, living in cities.
In 2023, there were significantly more female victims than male victims – by 11 percentage points. However, in 2024, this gap narrowed by 5.2 percentage points. At the same time, the activity of scammers targeting residents of rural areas has slightly increased.
Telephone and SMS fraud remains the most common method of deception, although its share has slightly decreased over the past year (by 8.4 percentage points).
For the first time, gaining access to people's accounts on "Gosuslugi" was among the top five popular methods used by cyber scammers. The remaining fraud channels (phishing resources, fake QR codes, and others) accounted for 13.7% of all cases.
Earlier it became known that the Russian Government is preparing a package of amendments to dozens of laws and regulations aimed at combating telephone and Internet scammers. In accordance with the new initiatives, government agencies, credit institutions and telecom operators will be prohibited from using foreign messengers for official purposes and communication with citizens. The list of prohibited messengers will be compiled by Roskomnadzor.
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