The latest scam detected on social media uses hacked verified accounts to carry it out.

What does the verified profile scam involve?

These are profiles with verified accounts (with the famous blue check) through which they contact you and offer you different services, for example, verifying your account. The point is that, seeing they are verified accounts, it gives us a certain level of trust—how could we suspect that behind a verified account there is actually a cybercriminal? And that is precisely what the cybercriminal is counting on: that you let your guard down and fall for the scam. From there, they will sweet-talk you into paying for the service and… you will have paid for nothing. You have already fallen for it.

And the thing is…

Just because an account is verified does not mean it cannot be hacked.

And that is exactly what happens in this case: cybercriminals hack verified accounts because they know it boosts their credibility and therefore makes it easier to deceive their victims. They use these profiles to scam people.

This is one of the reasons why cybercriminals hack social media accounts.

And precisely for this reason, we always insist that if your Instagram, Twitter, etc. profile is hacked, you report it, because if you do not and they use your account to scam people and someone is defrauded and files a report, do you know who the police will come looking for? You.

Here is the video in which Selva Orejón explains how this scam works.