INTERPOL says we should rename pig butchering to romance baiting to avoid victim shaming
There are always lots of financial scams running online, and pig butchering is currently one of the most commonly used techniques for parting victims from their money.
But INTERPOL doesn’t like the term, saying it is shaming and puts people off reporting crime. The international crime-fighting agency believes that a shift to the rather fluffier sounding “romance baiting” is important.
Top enterprise concerns raised by so called 'romance' or 'pig butchering scams'
During "romance week" and Valentine's Day, your heart can be stolen in the blink of an eye, and so can your money. The FBI has warned of "romance" scams, centering the bulletin around the celebration of love, which demonstrates that it’s not just a box of chocolates that’s seducing people, it’s scammers and cyber criminals. Staggering new data from the FTC shows that last year, nearly 70,000 people reported a romance scam, and reported losses hit $1.3 billion. The median reported loss was $4,400.
Romance scams are a variation of what’s called "pig butchering," a type of social engineering attack that alludes to the practice of fattening up a hog before slaughtering it. The approach combines some time-tested elements of fraud -- such as gaining trust. It relies on the effectiveness of relationships nurtured on social media and the ease with which currencies can be moved electronically. In simpler terms, scammers are posing as lovers, gaining the trust of their fake beau, and then asking them for money for gifts, procedures, plane tickets, you name it.