- "Pay to see more photos and videos" scam page lures you to checkout

- Bypassed payments make it difficult to investigate

- Realistic limits to resolution due to 'report and shut down'... "Consumers need to be vigilant"

Phishing sites pretending to be platform services are on the rise. After stealing the name of a specific service, they try to steal money by inducing cash payments or overseas card payments. Large portals such as Naver and Google are also being targeted by phishing sites, and subscription membership services such as Patreon are becoming new targets. Fantrie, a domestic platform for creators, has also been targeted by phishers.

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Baeg Seungjae, CEO of Frankstore Co., Ltd. - the company of Fantrie service - recently told consumers to pay special attention, saying that the number of victims of phishing pages stealing Fantrie's name is increasing. These pages are created on overseas servers that are not covered by domestic law, and users are guided to fake pages disguised as Fantrie to proceed with credit card payments.

△ Fantrie and a fraudulent page with stolen photos of members of the public / Provided by Frankstore

Scam websites are quickly created through free website creation services such as Wix. Crime groups operating on these websites establish their bases in overseas locations that are difficult to track. They create accounts by illegally using photos and personal information of online influencers or individuals through social media platforms such as Instagram. They then link to the URL of phishing pages. These phishing pages are similar to existing service web pages but are phishing sites that mimic logos and colors.

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Examples of fraudulent phishing pages that mimic existing service pages / Provided by Frankstore

Links to these phishing sites often have a similar appearance to the actual service, and can even have logos and business registration information that have been copied. If a person inputs their credit card information and proceeds with the payment, only the payment will be processed and nothing else will happen. It is a payment scam. These phishing sites, especially if they require the input of personal information such as names, phone numbers, card numbers, passwords, and expiration dates, can cause secondary damage due to information theft and are therefore a significant problem.

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Baeg stated, "With the recent rapid growth in the creator business market, there has been an increase in cases of fraud using the names of services such as Fantrie, the largest in Asia. Measures are taken as soon as a report is received, and monitoring systems are being carried out in cooperation with the cyber investigation department, but there are practical limitations. The most important thing is for individual users to be careful."