Improved ESET HOME Security battles the growing threat of digital scams.
If you’ve been thinking that you aren’t an interesting target for digital scammers because you are an average person, your bank account isn’t overflowing with cash, and your online activities are mundane, ask yourself these four questions: Do I have at least one online account of any kind? Do I have a name? A birth date? A home address?
Of course, you do! And all these are valuable data for cybercriminals.
In general, scams are no longer isolated incidents conducted by individual swindlers targeting important people. No, today they are mass-produced, automated, AI-powered, ever-present threats that will, at some point, come to our digital doorsteps.
Recognizing scams as one of the biggest threats to people’s digital lives, ESET has updated ESET HOME Security, the all-in-one protection for households, by boosting its anti-scam capabilities.
Because scams endanger small businesses with no or only a few employees, much like the demographics of households, ESET also incorporated these improvements to ESET Small Business Security.
Scams are everywhere
Scams are a growing concern in Singapore, with losses reaching an all-time high in 2024. According to the Singapore Police Force, victims lost a total of S$1.1 billion to scams last year — almost twice the amount recorded two years earlier.
A total of 51,501 scam cases were reported in 2024, up from 46,563 in 2023. The median loss per victim was S$1,389, while large-scale cases involving S$100,000 or more accounted for only 3% of incidents but made up over 70% of total losses.
Cryptocurrency-related scams were among the fastest-growing threats, contributing to 24.3% of total scam losses, compared with 6.8% in 2023.
The costliest scam types reported in 2024 included:
- Investment scams – S$249 million lost
- Job scams – S$124 million lost
- E-commerce scams – S$65 million lost
- Fake friend call scams – S$49 million lost
- Love scams – S$40 million lost
What ESET researchers see is not only the sheer volume of scams but also their increased complexity and seeming credibility. Fraudsters now have tools, including AI, that allow them to create sophisticated scams with less effort than ever before.
For example, in the second half of 2024, ESET telemetry detected a flood of scam ads, recognizing them under the name Nomani (a wordplay referring to “no money”). Using AI and deepfakes featuring famous personalities such as Joe Rogan or Elon Musk, these ads promoted “secret” investment opportunities, miraculous dietary supplements, and legal or law enforcement assistance. But as the name suggests, those lured into the scams ended up with no money and no real product or service.
Ondrej Kubovič explains Nomani the investment scam:
How to protect your household
Considering the volume of reported scams, the success rate of financial fraud is shockingly high (37% in the U.S. and 35% in the U.K.). This means that from now on, public awareness and risk prevention should become second nature. Let’s highlight the basics:
- Verify before trusting – Rule No. 1 is always verifying the identity and the request/offer of anyone who contacts you unexpectedly — especially if they ask for money or personal information.
- Educate yourself and your family – Recognize common scams, and encourage your family members to discuss any incidents they’ve encountered, so you can deal with them together.
- Secure your accounts – Ensure that all your family’s online accounts have strong, unique passwords. ESET Unique Password Generator is a good start. If possible, enable Two-Factor Authentication (2FA).
- Stay updated – Keep your software, including cybersecurity programs, up to date. Don’t forget about routers.
- Report suspicious activity: If you or a family member falls victim to a scam, don’t hesitate to report it to the authorities — they really can help. The FBI’s Financial Fraud Kill Chain has a 66% success rate in freezing reported transactions.
Stop scams with reliable cyber protection
When you have several family members using multiple smart devices, protecting everyone all the time is not an easy task. Robust cyber protection is necessary, but home admins are, naturally, also worried about the affordability and usability of comprehensive solutions.
These concerns aren’t new to ESET, which has been developing and fine-tuning its solutions for more than 30 years. To address all the requirements of you home admins, ESET has created ESET HOME Security, a powerful all-in-one protection solution with multiple product tiers available so that households can configure their protection based on their specific needs. ESET is proud to see that even its Essential tier was recognized last March as AV-Comparatives’ Product of the Year 2024, thanks to its reliability, performance, and user experience.
Table 1: Overview of available features in ESET HOME Security and ESET Small Business Security subscription tiers
With its latest update, ESET HOME Security can deliver even better results when battling both scams and malware. See the features available for Windows users:
- Antispam– Emails are one of the most abused online services when it comes to scamming people. With a watchful antispam feature, users can dodge many of those attempts.
- Malwareprotection – This is the crown jewel of ESET technology, combining various advanced reputation and analytical tools to discover, recognize, and stop malware.
- Ransomware protection– ESETRansomware Shield is designed to detect and block processes that resemble ransomware. The now-updated ESET HOME Security also includes the award-winning Ransomware Remediation feature, which creates backups of affected files after a potential ransomware threat is identified.
- Phishingprotection – With ESET Anti-Phishing, you can stay safe from scams and fake websites. Guard your browser, social apps, SMS, and links from attempts to steal your sensitive information.
- ESET Safe Banking & Browsing– This is a browser extension for elevated security and privacy complemented by Website Security Inspector. It scans the rendered HTML directly in the browser, enabling users to distinguish easily between safe and unsafe search results. Stay protected from phishing websites and other threats. Clear your browser data on demand or automatically, reducing digital clutter and optimizing browser efficiency.
- ESET Device Control – This tool monitors and alerts users to access attempts to various devices, including webcam and microphone.
- Virtual private network (VPN) – ESET VPN allows users to establish a private network connection.With the ESET HOME Security update ESET VPN has become available for multiple tiers.
- Identity protection– If scammers have already stolen your data and are now selling it on the Dark Web, ESET Identity Protection can detect these activities and send you an alert.
ESET Small Business Security
Because they handle personal and financial data gathered from a number of people, but also lack resources to hire cybersecurity professionals, Small Offices/Home Offices (SOHOs) can be even juicier targets for scammers than individuals and households.
Usually, SOHO administrators don’t even understand the possible threats, and even those who do often lack confidence in dealing with them, mainly due to a tight budget.
For example, 41% of the U.K.’s micro businesses (i.e., those with 1 to 9 employees) experienced a data breach or cyberattack in 2024 (a third of those were phishing attacks), yet more than 30% of them deemed cybersecurity a low priority.
ESET steps in to balance powers with ESET Small Business Security for SOHOs, incorporating for up to 25 devices all above-mentioned improvements, including Ransomware Remediation, Website Security Inspector, and Microphone Monitor.
ESET Small Business Security offers the same benefits as ESET HOME Security. It is reliable, multilayered, cross-platform protection (including server protection) that is easy to use and comes at a price likely in the ballpark of what your office spends on coffee.
Before the digital age, the saying used to be that there were only two things certain in life: death and taxes. Based on available data and global user experience, perhaps it’s time to add “scams” to the list.
In a world where any pop-up, ad, SMS, email, phone call, URL, or download button could be the start of a scam, reliable online protection can’t only pivot around the detection of malware on devices. ESET understands that modern scammers use a wide variety of tactics and tools, so reliable protection for households needs to be robust, multilayered, and focused on prevention.
With ESET HOME Security, you and your family members can rest assured that your finances and valuable data are safe.