Scammers are finding new ways to target your phone. Here are 5 ways to protect yourself

The warnings are everywhere these days. Don’t click this. Don’t open that. Don’t scan this. Don’t download that. These messages of caution, however well-intended, are so ubiquitous and constant that it should come as no surprise that some people have started to tune them out. How many people? Abo...

ReDence: A Hybrid Agentic and Decision-Model Framework for Rapid, Evidence-Grounded Detection of Modern Social Engineering Scams

Detecting online social engineering SE scams often requires examining website workflows, verifying claims against external sources, and connecting evidence across multiple pages. Existing detectors provide limited support for these investigations, leaving analysts to manually gather and validate...

Game of Phones: Harnessing Game Theory and LLMs in 'Bot Wars' to Counteract Phone Scams

Phone scams impose substantial and growing costs on individuals and financial systems worldwide, yet existing countermeasures impose no resource cost on perpetrators. Strategic scam-baiting, in which automated agents engage scammers to deplete their operational capacity, offers a proactive...

“Spray and pray” job applications could make it harder for you to spot a scam

AI can help you send more job applications. But when you lose track of where you’ve applied, a fake recruiter’s message can start to look like the reply you’ve been waiting for. Job hunting can feel like shouting into the void. You send applications, rewrite cover letters, and wait for replies th...

Help TDS Linked to Hotejka as 20,000+ Cloudflare Pages Domains Host Tech Support Scams

A long-running Traffic Distribution System TDS known as Help TDS to a Russian-language affiliate program called Hotejka , which appears to be a rebrand of a traffic monetization operation dubbed ROI777. Help TDS is assessed to be active since at least 2017, offering PHP code templates to partners...

Is this link safe? Find out with Malwarebytes Scam Link Check

Maybe it’s a text saying your package couldn’t be delivered, with a link to reschedule. Or an email from your bank asking you to verify your account. Or perhaps it’s an invitation from someone you know to view a document. The message looks real enough, but something about the link feels fishy. Do...

Sextortion “help” firm took $60 million from victims, FTC alleges

The Federal Trade Commission FTC has filed a complaint accusing Digital Forensics Corporation of exploiting people already targeted by sextortionists. We have talked about sextortion and recovery scams in the past, but we never looked specifically at the combination. Apparently, there is a lot of...

AI Scams Target Crypto Users, Not Protocols, and Wallet Security Is Catching Up

Picture a composite case drawn from documented scams where a tech professional spends forty minutes on a video…...

Old-School Credit Card Scams Are Far From Dead

In an era of increasingly sophisticated AI-fueled scams, a retro threat may be lurking in your mailbox...

Fake CAPTCHA Scams

New variant of an old scam: Use the framing of a CAPTCHA to get an unsuspecting user to download and run a malicious program...

BengalSEO Poisons Bing Search Results to Deliver MayaBot and Tech Support Scams

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a sprawling search engine optimization SEO poisoning campaign that paves the way for malware deployment and tech support scams. The campaign, discovered by the DFIR Report in March 2026, has been codenamed BengalSEO. It has operated out of the...

Researching Employment Scams

Researchers built a fake company to study fake employee scams...

Scammers are getting smarter about where they target you

Scammers are becoming more strategic about where they target people. Nine in ten toll scams—the fake unpaid-toll messages that threaten fines or license suspension—arrive by email or text, while roughly six in ten romance scams show up first on social media. That’s no coincidence. Rather than...

Effective Interventions against AI-Enhanced Scams

In 2025, scams were responsible for an estimated $442 billion in direct losses globally. In the United States, reported losses increased by nearly 400% between 2020 and 2025. Though AI in scamming is a relatively new phenomenon, its use significantly changes the economics of scams as well as the...

A week in security (August 24 – August 30)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: Protect your WhatsApp account with new passkey and 2FA upgrades The AI agent swarm that attacked Hugging Face is a warning for the future Flock wants privacy to meet surveillance halfway Fake listings can turn trusted platforms into scam springboards Fake Apple Pay...

LLM-Based Social Engineering Scams

OpenAI disrupted a social engineering group from Cambodia that used ChatGPT. Its scope is impressive: The network simultaneously conducted multiple types of scams, often blending elements from different schemes. For instance, operators used dating personas to build trust before introducing...

INTERPOL Operation Jackal IV Arrests 58, Identifies 263 in Global Cyber Fraud Crackdown

An eight-month INTERPOL operation targeting West African organized crime groups has led to arrests of 58 people and the identification of 263 suspects. "The operation, which brought together 22 countries from six continents, is a response to the escalating global threat posed by West African...

Sideloading on Android: What it is, why it’s risky, and how to do it more safely

A Google spokesperson announced on Reddit that it has started rolling out the first version of its Advanced Flow, designed to make installing apps from unverified developers safer. Let us explain what sideloading is, why Google Play is not 100% safe, what to look for when you’re sideloading so yo...

Love/hate relationship: The AI affair. Young people love AI, but it’s breaking their trust

Young people use AI for everything. From schoolwork to interview prep, relationship advice to shopping decisions, the technology has become part of how young people live. For the most digitally fluent generation ever, AI is a competitive edge, a creative partner, and an always-on assistant. But t...

A week in security (August 3 – August 9)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs: AI chat bots are sliding into League of Legends friend requests Meta ordered to pay $942 million over harm to children Apple WebKit vulnerabilities reveal your IP address, despite Private Relay Scammers target OnlyFans users with deepfakes Amazon and Apple...