In Japan, the police have set up a partnership with merchants by placing payment cards on their shelves supposed to pay fees for removing a Trojan horse or settling unpaid debts. These cards are fake, but promote prevention among the elderly, the target of choice for hackers.
If we sometimes wonder what the police do, well in Japan, they fight against online fraud and protect the elderly, easy prey for cyberhackers, against phishing.
In any case, this is what the brigade in Echizen, a town of nearly 90,000 inhabitants located in Fukui prefecture, Japan, is doing. To alert the population, and in particular its most vulnerable group, the elderly, to the risks of online fraud, it has chosen a formidably effective method, which has proven itself: using its adversary’s weapon to turn against him.
In this case, the Japanese authorities, who are not so bad, have placed payment cards on the shelves of certain grocery stores. The hackers had previously told online victims that they had to purchase them to either remove a Trojan horse from their machine or pay unpaid charges. An hour and a half.
Elderly people, the favorite target of hackers in Japan
9 out of 10 phishing victims are over 65, according to Asahi TVa Japanese television channel, which also establishes that elderly people represented 87% of the victims recorded in 2022. These scams thus generated between January and July 2023 more than 15 billion yen, or approximately 96 million euros.
These alarming figures have pushed the Japanese National Police Agency (NPA) to limit the use of bank cards to people aged over 65 or to those who have not used theirs at an ATM since at least a year.
The measure, quite unpopular, however remains at the discretion of the banks. And for everything else, there is the Echizen police, who have found a rather effective solution to prevent their senior citizens from being scammed.
Fake payment cards for real prevention against online fraud
The principle is rather simple. In Japan, some grocery stores have a payment card section intended for purchases in the country or online. These prepaid cards are available over the counter and facilitate payments in the country, particularly in shops or for public transport journeys.
It is in this area that the police made payment cards available to customers of partner stores for “ removing a Trojan ” And ” late fees for unpaid bills “. These cards, created from scratch by the police, are replicas of those imagined and placed by hackers to defraud their victims.
Victims that they will have previously attracted online, by telling them that their computer had been infected by a virus or a Trojan horse, or by pretending to be their bank warning them of unpaid debts. The cybercriminals then told their targets that they could go to a particular grocery store to buy a particular payment card to pay off their debt or clean their machine.
When paying for the purchase of the card, the employee, briefed in advance by the police, will warn the buyer of the deception set up by the police. This will allow us to establish a dialogue and prevent this online trap into which the customer could have fallen. In return, employees receive a small commission. A win-win partnership.
Sources: Bleeping Computer, Fukuishimbun
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