Scammers are now exploiting the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Turkey and Syria: this time stealing donations by abusing legitimate platforms like PayPal and Twitter.
This week, high magnitude earthquakes claimed more than 15,000 lives, caused extensive infrastructural damage and disrupted network connectivity across the Middle East and Mediterranean region.
As government, businesses and charity organizations step up to raise funds and aid victims of this ecological disaster, threat actors are wasting no time in targeting unsuspecting donors.
BleepingComputer has identified multiple scams running on Twitter and abusing legitimate platforms like PayPal’s fundraising pages to create convincing scam websites and collect proceeds from donors hoping to aid earthquake victims.
One of the scams, for example, touts itself to be a “Turkey Earthquake Relief” fundraiser on Twitter. To lend itself some credibility, the account persistently retweets updates from established news outlets and government officials.
