Overview
The victim expects to donate to a political organization, committee, or candidate. Also includes sham political survey organizations.
How It Works
The scammer solicits donations by pretending to be a legitimate political organization, or promises a small financial reward for completing a political survey.
The bait is typically issued as a spray-and-pray campaign on SMS or telephone robodialing.
The call to action is typically a URL going to a website which asks for donations, or elicits enough personal information to add the victim to additional scams, or which leads to data theft.
In some political contexts these scams are very hard to tell apart from "legal" or "legitimate" (but often annoying) political solicitations or survey requests that use many of the same techniques.
Related Articles
When Get-Out-The-Vote Efforts Look Like Phishing, Krebs on Security
Related Scams
None
Related Crime Schemes
A particular instance of this scam may embed one or more of these related schemes.
Data Loss or Theft: Any scheme that results in victim losing data/scammer stealing data. Data in this context can mean login credentials, credit card details, or other personal or corporate information.
Fraudulent Platform: Any scheme that relies on custom built software that assists the crime. Includes fraudulent trading platforms, fraudulent clickworking platforms, and the like.
Victim Targeting Context
The scammer may use one or more of the following techniques to reach the victim.
Advertising: The scammer uses advertising to passively reach the victim.
Spray and Pray / Scattered: The scammer approaches many victims at once such as through bulk email or SMS.
Semi-Targeted Regionally: The scammer approaches people in a certain region, for example by area code, or by using semi-targeted email.
Semi-Targeted Collection: The bait (initial reachout) is sent out to people in a collection harvested online, for example from some data breach or corporate directory.
Social Engineering: Psychological Manipulations
The scammer may use one or more of these psychological techniques to accomplish the scam.
Authority: The scammer employs an abuse of a position of authority to convince the victim to go along with the scam.
Celebrity: The scammer claims a celebrity endorsement in order to increase trust or interest from the victim.
Nice Guy: The scammer takes advantage of the victim's generosity or attempt to be "a nice guy".
Timing: The scammer times the scam to coincide with events or a particular season in the victim's context or locale, in order to build legitimacy.
Urgency: The scammer employs urgency to increase the likelihood that the victim will take action.
Social Engineering: Impersonation Techniques
The scammer may impersonate one or more of the following groups as part of the scam.
Catfishing: The perpetrator creates a fictitious online profile or persona.
Political Candidate or Organization: The perpetrator impersonates a political candidate or organization.