Here’s how to stay safe

If you live in the United States, I’m sure you’ve received a large number of election messages, calls, and annoying postcards delivered to your mailing address. A fair amount of these messages and calls are outright scams.

The rise of electoral fraud

We live in the digital age, the golden age of criminals. They hide in the shadows and carefully prepare their next catch. There is no shortage of exploits; new ones are created daily, coming from all corners of the world and looking for their next destination. With each election cycle, fraud becomes more persistent. Criminals have four years to plan the next round of phishing, smishing and vishing scams, refining and perfecting their approach over the course of the cycle. Unfortunately, the scams just keep getting better,

Election fraud is far from a new invention; the earliest case I have found dates back to 63 BC during the Roman Republic (known as the Catililinarian Conspiracy). However, thanks to our digital devices and access to information, they have become more savvy. For example, with both presidential candidates debating cryptocurrency, it’s no wonder we’ve seen an increase in crypto-related scams.

Elliptic found one scam page emblazoned with a huge banner of Donald Trump and the slogan “TRUMP LARGEST CRYPTO GIVEAWAY $100,000,000”. It’s clearly fake, using the classic “crypto doubling” scam (you pay one and get two at the end) to fool victims. Oh, and a healthy dash of Elon Musk to further entice potential users.

Scammers also use deeply fake videos to make it look like a presidential candidate is talking about a specific topic (often crypto!), or the likenesses of other prominent figures are manipulated into endorsements. Both Trump and Harris were the targets of deep-fake video and audio designed to deceive voters, but it also involved Elon Musk, world leaders and other prominent figures.

So while tried-and-true scams like phishing emails are still very much in play, fraudsters have understandably evolved into using the latest and greatest technology to fool voters on both sides of the aisle.

How to spot voter fraud

While fraudsters are targeting voters with sharp tactics—using emotions and devising ways to manipulate us—there are methods we can arm ourselves with to recognize and avoid these voter scams altogether.

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I hate to say it, but scammers are smart. They may impersonate official political campaigns, ask for urgent donations or other personally identifiable information. You may have received emails with links to websites that appear to be legitimate, asking for donations or maybe you want to join a mailing list. Unfortunately, it is not difficult to set something like this up. An experienced and motivated criminal can configure a phishing campaign within hours.

Scam messages and phone calls

If your inbox is flooded with text messages from random phone numbers like mine, you may have noticed the strange looking links they contain.

They will lead you to a phishing page where you will be asked to donate and ask for your personal information. It’s best to ignore them completely (don’t even write STOP) and don’t click on the links. Likewise, if you get a call from a random number and choose to answer it, you may be greeted by a representative of a political party. If you happen to stay on the call for a while, you’ll eventually be asked, “Would you like to donate a party?”

Well, there is no way to know who is actually on the other end of that phone. It can be no one. Maybe it’s part of a social engineering scam designed to target voters, where scammers pretend to be people they’re not and direct you to legitimate looking website. Open Secrets reports on fraudulent PACs designed to do just that, claiming to raise funds for a candidate but in effect pocketing money.

Now, it can be extremely difficult to spot a scammer on the phone, so in this case, keep this rule in mind: Never, ever give your debit or credit card number to someone who calls you on the phone. For websites, check the domain name and search online for any additional information about the site. If it does not appear in the search engine results, it is most likely a fraudulent page. If someone is pressuring you to pay, just put the phone down.

If you were going to donate anyway, you can do it in half an hour or the next morning after you find and verify that it’s from the correct bank account.

How to protect yourself and detect fraud during the election season

No matter your party affiliation, you’ll be getting a lot of information in the run-up to Election Day that will build up during the final push. Most of the messages you receive will seem completely random, but they are not. Your political information is stored in a database (it’s actually public information) and political campaigns and third-party organizations access this information to maximize their outreach efforts.

However, scammers are lurking within legitimate communication who try to take advantage of us. In most cases:

• There is no reason to reply to any message from a number or email address you do not recognize
• Always verify the authenticity of the sender.
• Be careful with messages
• Check the sender’s credentials
• Look for the official website or contact details
• Contact the campaign directly and confirm that this is a message from them

Another aspect is fake donation sites. Hyas reports on phishing sites designed to mimic official Democratic and Republican donation sites. These pages look exactly the same but register a slightly different website URL, a practice known as typosquatting. If everything looks beyond the scope and you don’t research the URL, you’ll pay money without a problem.

The image below shows a website mimicking the official Democrat donation page, but the URL is always slightly different (actblue vs. actwithblue – notice the extra “s” in the fake URL). Palo Alto Networks also saw an enormous increase in newly registered domains with election-related URLs such as kamala6900[.]site and Trump2024eth[.]VIP, all used for “cryptocurrency scams, donation-themed phishing and fake shopping sites.”

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Another consideration is the method of donation. While most political parties accept cash in any form, there are official accounts into which money should be paid. If the payment information entered seems random or doesn’t match what you expect, don’t make the payment. That being said, if you want to donate, please take a moment to verify your payment details; the gift will still be good in a few hours and you will know that it has been delivered to the right recipient.