Psychological mechanisms of destructive manipulation and strategies for preventing digital fraud

Context and relevance. The complex and international nature of the economic, social, moral and psychological damage caused by digital fraud, and its size, determines the search for ways to counteract and improve the safety of human activities in the digital environment. Objective: to identify the main research areas and model approaches for describing the mechanisms of destructive influence in the fraudster-victim system, to summarize the experience of international practices in countering cyberbullying and methods of its prevention. Method: scientific and critical system analysis of the phenomenon and its mechanisms, generalization and creative processing of materials from an international research search. Hypothesis: the universality of psychological mechanisms of destructive manipulative influence can become the basis for the search for means to counteract fraudulent strategies and the development of methods to prevent vulnerability to deception. Results: The anonymity of the Internet environment and the possibility of covert influence ensures the effectiveness of modern cyberbullying, the main mechanism of which is destructive manipulative influence carried out using artificial intelligence technologies that increase the reliability of false content and complicate the timely detection of deception. Modern foreign studies categorize the types of digital fraud and typify the phenomenology of manipulation in the «fraudster—victim» system, using the «Fraud Diamond», «Karpman Dramatic Triangle», «Dark and Light Triads», and «Big Five» models to describe the mechanisms of action. Information, educational, and preventive and communicative models combined with the introduction of technical means for detecting and suppressing fraudulent activities. Conclusions. In the current situation of the development of cyberbullying, the need for an interdisciplinary approach and the development of an integrative methodology for research and development and the implementation of prevention systems against destructive influences for fraudulent purposes is actualized. The focus of prevention should be shifted from an information and educational approach to a model of active learning in the skills of recognizing and countering manipulation, and the formation of mental and emotional attitudes related to the value aspects of the Self-concept of personality.