Original article ISPreview UK:Read More
Broadband and mobile operators Virgin Media and O2 (VMO2) have this morning warned customers that they’ve seen a rise in recruitment scams, which have now entered their top 10 list of the most reported scam types across their UK network. The warning comes as almost 1 million 16–24-year-olds are not in education, employment or training – making them prime targets for such scams.
According to VMO2’s latest quarterly Scam Index update, a total of 1.4 billion scam messages have been blocked to date and they’ve also been using AI to flag more than 80 million nuisance calls to customers a month. So far, some 37% of adults claim to have already seen at least one job / employment scam over the past quarter, although Delivery Scams still top the list, with 68% having seen such messages.
Related text messages (SMS / TXT) identified on O2’s network typically show scammers posing as recruiters and promising easy earnings (see examples below). As usual the goal of the fraudsters is to trick people into handing over their sensitive personal and financial details, or getting you to download special software, which hijacks your device.