A new scam is using Animal Crossing: New Horizons to trick people into South Korea, taking advantage of the shortage of Nintendo Switch console units available in stores in the country since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Scammers share links to digital stores through social networks to offer the Nintendo Switch console in its special edition of the company's latest success. As you can suppose, that console does not really exist and it is about websites that imitate real stores.
It is, after all, uA specific version of the usual scam to imitate the website of a bank or other service to deceive the user and get them to enter the details of their personal accounts or credit cards. It is, therefore, a strategy of phishing.
With this deception, scammers get credit card details from buyers and as soon as an operation has been carried out, they delete the links in social networks, delete the website from the server and start again.
According to local information, the police authorities that are investigating this scam estimate that More than 4,000 euros have already been stolen from different victims. South Korean police have launched a campaign to remind users of the usual security measures to prevent online shopping scams.
Among these measures, we find recommendations such as suspecting offers that are too good to be true, check security certificates and make sure the URL which we have accessed is really that of the store we want to access.
