NoThere is no peace on the front of SMS scams, a growing and increasingly worrying phenomenon and because smartphones are now an integral part of daily life and used to interact and receive services of all kinds. Both because cybercriminals they are more and more creative in always devising new ways to use text messages in order to extort money or personal information.
A new sms scam
The latest scam message arrived in recent weeks to many users reads as follows: «Hi mom, my cell phone is broken. I’m texting you now from a friend’s phone. my new (with the typo, ed) number is… Write me on whatsapp». The goal, as always, is only one: that is to deceive the unfortunate and then be able to steal their data and empty their accounts.
How does it work
The scam works like this: anyone who doesn’t recognize the deception and will follow what is indicated in the first text message received will move the conversation to whatsapp. At this point making the victim think that the family member who is writing to him is in a dangerous or emergency situation, scammers will try to push the victim to perform certain actionssuch as obviously sending money or sensitive information to resolve certain problems including, incidentally, credit card credentials or bank account details.
The phenomenon of scams via devices is growing more and more (Photo by Wolf von Dewitz/picture alliance via Getty Images)
What to do if you receive the sms
It is only one way to protect yourself from the attempt of what is called smishing: do not click on the link contained in the message. If, on the contrary, you have clicked on the link contained in the text message, the postal police recommends doing three things. The first, format the smartphone, i.e. reset it to restore the factory settings. The second is to inform your contacts in the address book to trash any messages from that telephone user. The third, perhaps most important, of change all passwords used in the smartphone and specifically those of home banking.
Phishing, vishing and smishing: a name for every scam
There are three scams most common through electronic devices, but whether it’s a mobile phone or a computer, the goal is always the same: extort sensitive data and personal information.
With the term phishing scams carried out via the internet are indicated in which the scammers pretend to be a reliable institution and thus manage to deceive users.
With the term vishingwe mean scams for which the tool used is the voice or phone calls
And finally there is it smishing, which takes place by sending SMS to the unfortunates. These messages usually contain links to web pages from which sensitive data is then deceived.
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