For many people, Skype is an indispensable program for live exchanges with friends or family if you can't be nearby.

But even here, caution is required to avoid becoming a victim of money theft.

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A high-ranking employee at an international IT company recently had this first-hand experience.

Although the employee had some IT security knowledge in keeping with her role, cybercriminals managed to take over her Skype account and then steal a total of 4,500 euros from her and her Skype contacts.

The whole thing worked like this:

After the cybercriminals hacked the employee's account, they chatted with several friends from their contact list of around 300 people and asked them to transfer money to their own account at very short notice.

A more concrete justification than that the supposed employee urgently wanted to buy something online and her online banking account didn't have enough funds wasn't even needed.

The Skype friends transferred the amount willingly, even without ascertaining the identity of the requester.

After the employee of the IT company noticed the incident, it took three days until it was resolved using Skype, although the friends' financial loss was not resolved.

To this day, they are struggling with a gauntlet run by banks and police authorities, the outcome of which is uncertain.

Protect your account in time!

A few tips:

  1. The best, most obvious and at the same time most often ignored tip is to use a reliable password! Our IT security partner Kaspersky Lab will show you how to create one here . You can also password check tool
  2. Never use one password for different services. Because if a particular service is compromised, you could lose all of your accounts .
  3. Use two-factor authentication to protect your accounts. In this case, you will receive a short, one-time code via SMS or email that you can use as a second password.
  4. Never click on suspicious links because there are many phishing websites that will steal your data . You should also never respond to emails and messages from strangers or open any attachments they contain.

Many thanks to our cooperation partner Kaspersky Lab for making the content available.


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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )