Police: Increase in hacked social media accounts

According to Johan Halling, there are more younger people than before who have been affected in the latest wave of hacking of accounts on social media. Not infrequently, they have their parents' payment cards linked to the accounts. A possible explanation for the increase is that Meta now charges for several different services, for example verified and ad-free accounts - which gives fraudsters a new arena to commit crimes.

- Last year, almost 100,000 card frauds were reported without the physical card being involved. Those crimes take place online, for example. We call it a CNP fraud, which is read card not present. It goes without saying that we cannot investigate so many crimes, notes Johan Halling.

According to him, many of the nearly one hundred thousand crimes can be linked to various social media platforms. The victim may have received a fake message from a friend, they may have clicked on a fake ad or responded to a message from someone pretending to be the platform's support.

- The fraudsters are skilled. They know what people click on out of curiosity, such as a message from a friend. Many also act when an alleged support person contacts them and asks the recipient to click on a link to secure an account that is allegedly exposed, says Johan Halling.

Since the problem of account hijacking that can be linked to card fraud is limitless, the Swedish police cooperates with Empact, the EU's platform for cooperation against serious organized crime, among other things. All member states contribute intelligence information. Online fraud is one of several priority areas.

- Meta is also a vulnerable party in the hot air. My experience is that they have tried to step up the fight against fraudsters, but we believe that it is still more reactive than proactive. For example, it would be better for the ads to be scrutinized before they are posted than after it has already been discovered that it is phishing, says Johan Halling.

He believes that more actors must become more proactive and vigilant about how different services can be used for criminal purposes.

Here is the police's best advice:

● Never perform security updates via links or messages – always do so in official apps or platforms.

● Do not save card details on web pages and be critical of who you share your details with.

● Check friends if you get strange messages or links from them.

● Block internet purchases in your banking app when you are not shopping. It's easy to temporarily allow internet shopping when you shop from secure sites yourself.

● Do not act under stress – verify unknown claims yourself through official channels of contact.