Entries Tagged "fraud"

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Hacking Scientific Citations

Some scholars are inflating their reference counts by sneaking them into metadata:

Citations of scientific work abide by a standardized referencing system: Each reference explicitly mentions at least the title, authors’ names, publication year, journal or conference name, and page numbers of the cited publication. These details are stored as metadata, not visible in the article’s text directly, but assigned to a digital object identifier, or DOI—a unique identifier for each scientific publication.

References in a scientific publication allow authors to justify methodological choices or present the results of past studies, highlighting the iterative and collaborative nature of science.

However, we found through a chance encounter that some unscrupulous actors have added extra references, invisible in the text but present in the articles’ metadata, when they submitted the articles to scientific databases. The result? Citation counts for certain researchers or journals have skyrocketed, even though these references were not cited by the authors in their articles.

[…]

In the journals published by Technoscience Academy, at least 9% of recorded references were “sneaked references.” These additional references were only in the metadata, distorting citation counts and giving certain authors an unfair advantage. Some legitimate references were also lost, meaning they were not present in the metadata.

In addition, when analyzing the sneaked references, we found that they highly benefited some researchers. For example, a single researcher who was associated with Technoscience Academy benefited from more than 3,000 additional illegitimate citations. Some journals from the same publisher benefited from a couple hundred additional sneaked citations.

Be careful what you’re measuring, because that’s what you’ll get. Make sure it’s what you actually want.

Posted on July 15, 2024 at 1:13 PM • View Comments

Details of a Phone Scam

First-person account of someone who fell for a scam, that started as a fake Amazon service rep and ended with a fake CIA agent, and lost $50,000 cash. And this is not a naive or stupid person.

The details are fascinating. And if you think it couldn’t happen to you, think again. Given the right set of circumstances, it can.

It happened to Cory Doctorow.

EDITED TO ADD (2/23): More scams, these involving timeshares.

Posted on February 21, 2024 at 7:08 AM • View Comments

Online Retail Hack

Selling miniature replicas to unsuspecting shoppers:

Online marketplaces sell tiny pink cowboy hats. They also sell miniature pencil sharpeners, palm-size kitchen utensils, scaled-down books and camping chairs so small they evoke the Stonehenge scene in “This Is Spinal Tap.” Many of the minuscule objects aren’t clearly advertised.

[…]

But there is no doubt some online sellers deliberately trick customers into buying smaller and often cheaper-to-produce items, Witcher said. Common tactics include displaying products against a white background rather than in room sets or on models, or photographing items with a perspective that makes them appear bigger than they really are. Dimensions can be hidden deep in the product description, or not included at all.

In those instances, the duped consumer “may say, well, it’s only $1, $2, maybe $3­—what’s the harm?” Witcher said. When the item arrives the shopper may be confused, amused or frustrated, but unlikely to complain or demand a refund.

“When you aggregate that to these companies who are selling hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of these items over time, that adds up to a nice chunk of change,” Witcher said. “It’s finding a loophole in how society works and making money off of it.”

Defrauding a lot of people out of a small amount each can be a very successful way of making money.

Posted on November 9, 2023 at 7:09 AM • View Comments

Identity Theft from 1965 Uncovered through Face Recognition

Interesting story:

Napoleon Gonzalez, of Etna, assumed the identity of his brother in 1965, a quarter century after his sibling’s death as an infant, and used the stolen identity to obtain Social Security benefits under both identities, multiple passports and state identification cards, law enforcement officials said.

[…]

A new investigation was launched in 2020 after facial identification software indicated Gonzalez’s face was on two state identification cards.

The facial recognition technology is used by the Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles to ensure no one obtains multiple credentials or credentials under someone else’s name, said Emily Cook, spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office.

Posted on August 29, 2023 at 7:03 AM • View Comments

Complex Impersonation Story

This is a story of one piece of what is probably a complex employment scam. Basically, real programmers are having their resumes copied and co-opted by scammers, who apply for jobs (or, I suppose, get recruited from various job sites), then hire other people with Western looks and language skills are to impersonate those first people on Zoom job interviews. Presumably, sometimes the scammers get hired and…I suppose…collect paychecks for a while until they get found out and fired. But that requires a bunch of banking fraud as well, so I don’t know.

EDITED TO ADD (10/11): Brian Krebs writes about fake LinkedIn profiles, which is probably another facet of this fraud system. Someone needs to unravel all of the threads.

Posted on October 10, 2022 at 6:09 AM • View Comments

Credit Card Fraud That Bypasses 2FA

Someone in the UK is stealing smartphones and credit cards from people who have stored them in gym lockers, and is using the two items in combination to commit fraud:

Phones, of course, can be made inaccessible with the use of passwords and face or fingerprint unlocking. And bank cards can be stopped.

But the thief has a method which circumnavigates those basic safety protocols.

Once they have the phone and the card, they register the card on the relevant bank’s app on their own phone or computer. Since it is the first time that card will have been used on the new device, a one-off security passcode is demanded.

That verification passcode is sent by the bank to the stolen phone. The code flashes up on the locked screen of the stolen phone, leaving the thief to tap it into their own device. Once accepted, they have control of the bank account. They can transfer money or buy goods, or change access to the account.

Posted on September 20, 2022 at 6:29 AM • View Comments

$23 Million YouTube Royalties Scam

Scammers were able to convince YouTube that other people’s music was their own. They successfully stole $23 million before they were caught.

No one knows how common this scam is, and how much money total is being stolen in this way. Presumably this is not an uncommon fraud.

While the size of the heist and the breadth of the scheme may be very unique, it’s certainly a situation that many YouTube content creators have faced before. YouTube’s Content ID system, meant to help creators, has been weaponized by bad faith actors in order to make money off content that isn’t theirs. While some false claims are just mistakes caused by automated systems, the MediaMuv case is a perfect example of how fraudsters are also purposefully taking advantage of digital copyright rules.

YouTube attempts to be cautious with who it provides CMS and Content ID tool access because of how powerful these systems are. As a result, independent creators and artists cannot check for these false copyright claims nor do they have the power to directly act on them. They need to go through a digital rights management company that does have access. And it seems like thieves are doing the same, falsifying documents to gain access to these YouTube tools through these third parties that are “trusted” with these tools by YouTube.

Posted on August 15, 2022 at 9:14 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.