Internet giant warns of dark chain dangers

With all the good things that have come about through the development of national financial innovation and artificial intelligence technologies, there's also been the gradual formation of a dark internet industry chain, which now poses an increasing threat to the safety of personal information and property, according to a recent report.

Released by Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd, the report noted that the traditional Trojan virus and telephone fraud, which used to be simple, crude examples of dark internet scams, have matured to into more accurate fraud patterns, such as financial fraud and more advanced database-based data cyberattacks.

According to Tencent's report, the company detected about 13.3 million malicious websites last year, among which 750,000 were newly established knockoff websites. The top five categories of knockoff websites are banks, telecommunication, e-commerce, games and internet finance. Trojan viruses allow attackers to access users' personal information, affecting 188 million users in China last year. Of those cases, 63.35 percent were payment traps.