In a recent report by Group-IB, security researchers uncovered scam campaigns that cart away an estimate of $80 million monthly from 10 million people in 91 countries.
The scammers managed this dubious trick by faking popular brands and encouraging unsuspecting users to take part in fake surveys or giveaways.
The researchers found that there are now 60 known fraud networks that use targeted links in their campaigns while impersonating 121 brands in fake giveaways.
In order to get people to participate in their nefarious activities, the scammers target their victims in a variety of ways, including context-based advertising, advertising on legal and wholly dishonest websites, posts on social media, forum posts, text messages, malicious and pop-up notifications.
The main purpose of reaching people through these strategies is to direct them to scam sites that are clones of the official sites of the impersonated brands.
Although the researchers did not mention any brand name, they carefully identified fake surveys and giveaways impersonating Google, Target, Amazon, Microsoft and others.
For more information, read the original story in BleepingComputer.