Spanish police warn of increase in scams on popular car-sharing app

The Spanish police in Malaga have warned of an increase in scams on a popular car-sharing app that connects drivers with passengers.
The Cybercrime Department of the Malaga Police has recently detected a notable increase in the number of scams targeted at users of a well-known mobile application that connects drivers with passengers for car-sharing.
The application connects different people who want to make the same journey on the same day, allowing them to share the costs.
The scam involves the victim (the passenger) being persuaded by the scammer (the driver) to continue the conversation outside the mobile application, usually via WhatsApp.
The scammer claims that certain fees can be saved by making the payment outside of the app, or that the platform is not working properly, inviting the victim to talk outside the official website, the National Police has warned.
Once the victim has come to an agreement with the “driver” about the trip, the scammer provides the passenger with a link to a web page that impersonates the original platform, where the victim will be asked to make payment pay for the journey.
This allows the scammer to get hold of the victim’s bank card details and immediately make online purchases on foreign websites.
The National Police has insisted once again that the best protection against such cyber-scams is prevention, and recommend always using the secure channel provided by the platform instead of shortcuts.
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