Home Page Navigation Contents Contact Sitemap Search

The latest attempts at phishing fraud

Phishing mes­sages sent out via e-mail or SMS have once again started to markedly increase since late summer. In the process, these fraud attempts are becoming ever more sophis­ti­cated. Don’t be deceived!

Internet crim­i­nals don’t just demon­strate a tech­no­log­ical under­standing, but time and again also prove to be very resourceful. While during lock­down, it was Corona-related phishing mes­sages which were pre­dom­i­nant, since August, fraud­sters have been coming up with ever new scams to hood­wink cred­u­lous users. Alleged blocks on accounts and cards, unde­liv­ered parcels, vouchers won and telecom com­pany refunds are cur­rently the most pop­ular phishing traps employed.

These faked mes­sages usu­ally reach users by e-mail or SMS – and are becoming increas­ingly plau­sible. Attackers write in flaw­less German. Often, vic­tims are addressed via their own e-mail address or even their name. The sender’s address is also quite often faked, and the linked phishing web­site fre­quently dis­plays a HTTPS address and a domain name reg­u­larly con­sid­ered trust­worthy by layper­sons. Fraud­sters some­times also use mali­cious e-mail attach­ments instead of links to mis­lead even expe­ri­enced recipients.

Cau­tion is advised – but please don’t panic. There are a few simple rules of con­duct to pro­tect you against all such fraud attempt:

  • Never use any links you receive by e-mail, SMS or mes­senger ser­vices, and never scan in any such QR codes to log into your finan­cial insti­tu­tion facility.
  • Never fill in any forms received by e-mail and asking you to enter log-in information.
  • Treat e-mail and SMS attach­ments with great caution.
  • Never dis­close any con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion, such as pass­words, during tele­phone calls.
  • Always enter the address for your online ser­vice provider or finan­cial institution’s log-in page man­u­ally via the browser address line.
  • Check there is an SSL con­nec­tion (https://, lock symbol) when calling up a log-in page, and verify that the Internet address shown in the address bar of your browser actu­ally indi­cates that you have reached the cor­rect page.
  • Con­tact your finan­cial insti­tu­tion if you are not quite sure or some­thing is not com­pletely clear.

Addi­tional infor­ma­tion can also be found in our article on Phishing.

 

What else would you like to learn about security when e-banking?

Reg­ister for a course now
and learn more:

Basic course

Find out about cur­rent Internet threats and some easy pro­tec­tive mea­sures, and how to securely use e-banking.

fur­ther information

Online course mobile banking/payments

Find out about mobile banking, mobile pay­ments and how to securely use these apps.

fur­ther information

Online course for the under-30s

Learn how to use your smart­phone securely. Next to basics, we will show you what you should know about social media, clouds, mobile banking and mobile payments.

fur­ther information

Course for SMEs

Is your organ­i­sa­tion suf­fi­ciently secure? Learn which mea­sures you can take to sig­nif­i­cantly strengthen your organisation’s IT security.

fur­ther information