In the middle of the digital age, practically every day we meet new scams that try to get hold of users’ personal and / or banking data. Now, the National Police have warned of the return of the SMS de Correos scam , which already went viral at the beginning of the year. Criminals use a text message as a hook in which they pose as the Post Office and simulate the delivery of a package.
The number of people shopping online has exploded in recent years, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic began. Thus, the vast majority of us are always waiting for a package to arrive at our house. This is why it is so easy to fall into the trap.
How does it work?
We are going to analyze in detail the SMS Mail scam to avoid being victims of it.
We receive a text message on our mobile phone that says the following : «Correos Service, !! FINAL WARNING !! Dear customer: To finalize the last payment of the order you need to pay a total of € 1.79, click on the link » .
Reading the message carefully, we already realize that something is wrong since it is not well written and, in addition, it contains some faults . However, if we read it quickly we can believe that it is really about the Post Office and that we have to pay 1.79 euros for customs, for example.
What happens when we click on the link? It takes us to a fake Post Office page . Once there, it asks us to enter our personal data, as well as the credit or debit card number to, supposedly, make the payment.
But, when we do, we are giving all this data to hackers . Can you imagine everything they can do knowing our name and surname, the DNI number and the card number?
📢ALERT #PHISHING
They pretend to be #CORREOS and ask you to click on a link âž¡ DO NOT PICK
They can steal your data or install a #trojan pic.twitter.com/IR1f5D3JTR
– National Police (@policia) September 6, 2021
As the National Police points out, we have to be wary of SMS and emails of this type . In addition, in the event of any type of doubt, we must always contact the entity to verify that what has come to us is real.
If by chance we have fallen into the trap, the first and most important thing is to quickly call the bank to block the account . Next we must go to the Police to file a complaint. However, recovering the money in case it has been stolen from us in many cases is complicated since cybercriminals operate from remote countries.
