Kaspersky Lab experts warn of a new type of fraud, in which cybercriminals tell their victims that they should be compensated for data leak.

The potential victims are redirected to the Personal Data Protection Fund website, where they can check if their data has been leaked. For this purpose, the victim must provide their details such as name, surname, telephone number or social media account details. Then, a message appears that the above data has been leaked to the network, however, the victim can expect compensation of up to several thousand dollars. To obtain the compensation, the victim must provide a credit card number, as well as social security number (SSN). However, people outside of the USA may purchase a temporary insurance number.

And it is at this point that fraud occurs in the form of extortion of $9. Regardless of whether the victim provides the correct SSN, the site displays an error message and suggests the purchase of a temporary SSN number. If the consent to the purchase of SSN number is given, the victim is redirected to the payment form in English or Russian with the purchase price provided. The language version of the form depends on the victim’s IP address.

According to Kaspersky Lab, the scammers seized the opportunity to earn easy money, after some organizations began to pay money to users who were the victims of a data leak.