By Mai Al Abria — MUSCAT: May 1 - Cyber criminals are increasingly preying upon vulnerable Omani women when they go online in search of employment opportunities. An Observer investigation has unearthed instances of a handful of women falling victim to online predators, with at least one of them the target of financial and sexual blackmail by a fraudster who had stolen the identity of a policeman to target his prey.
According to Mubarak al Hadadi, General Manager and Chief Security Officer at Qnective, the victims are typically young women who are active on social media but generally gullible when targeted by cyber fraudsters.
Many become vulnerable when their online accounts are hacked and their personal information falls into the hands of the hackers.
Of late, young women going online to scour for job opportunities have become the target of these fraudsters.
Compromised online recruitment sites have become the easiest route to identifying female job-seekers as victims, experts point out.
In one shocking incident that recently came to light, an Omani college student who frequented various social media sites become the target of a prolonged and vicious cyber extortion scam.
‘RS’ (not her real initials) was contacted online by an individual who successfully hacked her personal accounts and discovered that she had visited some porn sites.
Masquerading as a police officer, having earlier stolen the identify of an official, the fraudster threatened to disclose her private details to her family in she did not cough up RO 5,000 in extortion money.
Anxious to safeguard her otherwise good name, RS borrowed the amount from a relative and dropped off the bribe at a pre-agreed location. But the shakedown did not end there. After a while, the fraudster got in touch with RS on the pretext of offering her a job. Once again posing as a police officer, he asked to help out in the ‘entrapment’ of a fictitious individual, whom he claimed was the subject of a police investigation.
He asked RS to befriend this individual, learn his personal secrets, and essentially spy on him for the sake of the investigative mission. But the fraudster’s game-plan was to deceive RS into having an illicit relationship with him, something he succeeded in achieving.
The victim, who knew there was no such video in existence, reported the blackmail attempt to the authorities. Investigations later revealed that several innocent people were targeted by the fraudster. He was also found in possession of around RO 60,000 in cash.
A local criminal court eventually sentenced him to more than 20 years in jail for identity theft, fraud and blackmail.
Also instructive is the example of ‘Maryam’ who had registered her details on a number of online recruitment sites.
Sometime later, she was surprised to find a rather dubious message advising here to apply through a app named ‘Airdroid’. Suspicious about the message, she inquired with cyber security experts who warned here against using the app, which when activated can access the applicant’s phone details. Personal information gained as a result is then typically used as a blackmail tool, they warned.
Mubarak advises job-seekers to only use reputable websites when applying for a job. Applicants are also encouraged to work from behind a firewall, be alert for phishing scams, and avoid spyware and adware.
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