In the first half of 2023, five times more phishing resources were registered on Telegram than a year ago. Their total number has reached 5,000, Forbes writes, citing Angara Security data.

In the second quarter of this year, the number of attempts by Russian users to switch to phishing resources impersonating Telegram increased by almost 39% compared to the first three months of 2023, said Olga Svistunova, senior content analyst at Kaspersky Lab.

According to Yuri Drugach, co-founder of the StopPhish project, the growth of fraud in Telegram continues, and at the beginning of 2023 a real boom began. According to his calculations, during the three months of summer, the number of fraudulent websites related to Telegram tripled compared to the same period last year. Compared to the spring months of this year, fake websites increased by 10% in the summer.

Speaking about the increase in phishing attacks, Pavel Kuznetsov, director of product issues at Garda Technologies, said that their goal is to extract login data from the user's messenger account, or payment or other personal information.

Once attackers gain access to someone else's account, they start sending malicious messages to their contacts, said Diana Selekhinna, an expert at Solar Aura, an external digital threat monitoring center. According to him, users are much more likely to trust messages received from friends and acquaintances and click on the links sent to them, so the probability of successfully hacking someone else's account increases significantly.

According to Vadim Shelest, the leading expert of the security analysis department of the Future Crew MTS RED innovation center, it is important that many companies use the messenger as a corporate communication tool or a channel to communicate with customers. “Telegram accounts are so popular. Attacks on messengers require minimal costs from criminals, and they are very effective," he said.

Basic fraud schemes

The most common schemes on Telegram are links sent to users offering to vote for someone in this or that children's contest, get a free premium account, make a donation for a child's treatment, read a document, get social benefits, and get a driver's license. In addition, scammers often offer to use Telegram for adults, try a premium Telegram subscription, or download a cracked version of a video game.

Also, the user may receive a message stating that his comments in some groups and channels are allegedly defamatory, and he is offered to delete them by going through the link sent.

In addition, criminals often pretend to be promoting various platforms. Over the past few months, a number of users have come across fake ad sellers. Creators approached them to increase the monetization of their platforms, in return they were asked to provide channel statistics and a link to do so. Once the users entered the channel data, the scammers logged in and took control of them, thereby stealing the platforms from the rightful owner.