The expert spoke about the risks of fraud in online games

Scammers are increasingly using mobile games as a channel to place malicious ads and deceive users with promises of easy earnings. Alina Popova, head of the gaming department of the Rafinad platform, told Izvestia about this on June 29.

According to the expert, the main problem of fraud in gaming advertising is not only the financial loss of users, but also the undermining of trust in the entire segment of in-game advertising.

"When a person sees news about fraud through gaming ads, they stop distinguishing between legitimate ads and malicious schemes. As a result, bona fide developers, advertising networks and brands suffer: audience trust decreases, the conversion rate of advertising campaigns decreases, and the cost of attracting users increases," Popova explained.

The expert noted that one of the key ways to protect is to check the labeling of ads. Legitimate ads must contain the label "Advertising" and information about the advertiser, and the absence of such data is an alarming signal.

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In addition, offers of quick earnings, guaranteed income, or easy investments should arouse caution, as these are the schemes scammers most often use.

Special attention should be paid to clicks on external links. If the advertisement leads to unknown sites, requests bank card information, SMS codes, or the installation of applications outside official stores, it is better to stop interacting.

Scammers also often disguise themselves as streamers and bloggers, offering free game bonuses or skins for logging into an account through third-party resources. In such cases, the links usually lead to phishing sites that steal user data.

Another common scheme is mailing in game chats and instant messengers with invitations to tournaments or closed testing. After clicking on the links, malware can get on the device, and accounts are compromised.

On June 12, the head of the city's online project "Call me Back" at the Moscow Department of Information Technology, Valentina Shilina, warned that one should not try to replay telephone scammers, since voice recording can be used in the future to confirm banking transactions or to deceive loved ones.