The Naperville Police Department is warning residents to be wary of CAPTCHA scams. The department shared information from the Federal Trade Commission on the topic in a Facebook post on Thursday.
Identifying the scam
The FTC says a new phishing scam uses what look like CAPTCHA requests, which are used to prove users are not robots on many sites.
Real CAPTCHA tasks are image- or text-based, asking users to do tasks like matching pictures of traffic lights or typing in a series of letters and numbers as they appear.
CAPTCHA scams request users to input a series of commands such as “Windows + R,” then “Ctrl + V,” and “Enter.” This set of commands leads to a pop-up that looks like a security verification, but it instead pastes and runs hidden malware on your device. Scammers use the malware to steal personal information such as bank credentials and login data…