Advent Season: Peak Season for Fraudulent SMS and Phishing Scams

The weeks before Christmas are prime time for scam SMS. "During the pre-Christmas period, online commerce flourishes, and the time pressure increases for most of us. Fraudsters take advantage of this and send SMS messages that supposedly come from parcel delivery services, containing dubious links with payment requests and similar," says Klaus M. Steinmaurer, Managing Director of the Rundfunk und Telekom Regulierungs-GmbH RTR for the Telecommunications and Postal Services division.

"We registered nearly 700 complaints about scam SMS in October. Although this is slightly less than in September, I expect a soon, significant increase," said Steinmaurer. Recently, there has also been an increase in phishing SMS with the identifier "Austria-ID" or "Finanzonline". Around Christmas time, all other illegal schemes typically increase as well: Fraudsters will increasingly try to obtain login data using daughter/son tricks or through fake SMS from supposed online retailers.

Recognizing Phishing SMS

Pause for a moment: Is this SMS really understandable in terms of type, wording, and timing? At the slightest doubt, contact the company through another way, such as the customer hotline.

Do not trust the sender identification. If the sender appears to be your bank or a well-known postal service provider, this display is very likely to be fake.

Never click on links in SMS. They may lead to fake websites, distribute malware, or dubious apps.

Tracking is usually unsuccessful because the sender ID of the automatically sent SMS is typically forged, and large international networks are behind the fraud.

Fraudulent Calls

According to RTR, there are still numerous complaints about fraudulent calls in which a recorded voice, claiming to be from well-known service providers like PayPal or Amazon, instructs the recipient to press a certain button on their phone. If this is done, the caller is connected to a real person who instructs them to install a malicious app on their phone.

Fraudulently used sender IDs of SMS and phone numbers can be reported at www.rufnummernmissbrauch.at.

More about Christmas in Vienna

(APA/Red)

This article has been automatically translated, read the original article here.