The hunt for popular game accounts is on

With a new gaming season starting, Kaspersky experts have found hundreds of phishing pages, aimed at stealing PUBG Mobile accounts.

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Game developers often offer users small but welcome incentives in exchange for playing their game.  A multiplayer shooter, PUBG Mobile, has just started a new season, with new items, monsters and mechanics from another popular game, Metro: Exodus. As is often the case, fraudsters have not ignored such a good opportunity to capitalize on new gaming activity.

Kaspersky has identified no less than 260 phishing pages, offering users the chance to win new items. To get the prizes, users simply needed to submit their gaming accounts through their Twitter or Facebook profiles. Once entry failed, users were requested to provide additional information, including the nickname they use in the game, their phone number and other personal details. As a result, scammers not only collected social media accounts but these additional personal details – all in order to sell the gaming accounts for a profit.

“The attackers got themselves really well prepared for the start of the new gaming season. The pages we found were designed in a very convincing way, both in design and interface, that is normally very familiar to gamers,” comments Tatyana Shcherbakova, security expert at Kaspersky.

In order to avoid falling victim to this kind of fraud, Kaspersky has the following recommendations:

• Do not take part in lotteries, apart from the official <http://www.pubgmobile.com/event/pubgmxmetro/> games’ websites
• Check information via official resources. If a certain activity really exists, the game developer is unlikely to keep it a secret
• Still, these schemes can be very convincing – if you do not look closely, you may not recognize the deception. We recommend using a reliable security solution <https://www.kaspersky.com/internet-security/v3> that simply will not allow you to visit phishing pages

Find more details about the story here: https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/pubg-metro-phishing/37711/.