The scams are not exclusive to the World Cup either and are likely to be in play for other major events.
“With this World Cup, scammers got very creative, as we have observed a variety of fraudulent schemes employed,” said Olga Svistunova, security expert at Kaspersky. “We see how they are trying to benefit most from the situation and exploit as many trendy topics as possible, including a growing number of NFT scams related to the World Cup. At the same time, there are many so-called traditional scams out there from giveaways and fake tickets to merch stores.”
Top 5 scams
Firstly, ticketing scams such as phishing, with fans tricked into clicking links to fraudulent sites that take personal and financial data. With the 2022 tournament only offering digital tickets, the risk of ending up on a fake site is elevated.
Phishing is also used in the second top 5 scam where eager fans are lured to fake competition sites where the prize is two World Cup tickets. Of course, there’s a catch: those that ‘win’ must pay a delivery fee for their tickets. Everyone is told they are successful, but only the scammers win!
Fake sites claiming to sell official merchandise are the third biggest scam related to World Cup 2022.
