On the right track! Ten million suspicious messages sent to Safeonweb in 2023, and you should especially pay attention to these messages | Domestic

The email address [email protected] is clearly growing in fame every year. “On average, we received no fewer than 27,000 messages per day last year,” the CCB said. Together they account for almost 10 million messages in total. And that had results: “With this information we were able to detect more than 1,200,000 suspicious links. Less attentive internet users who click on such a link will be referred to a warning page and will therefore not be scammed.”

“We would like to thank all these conscientious citizens and encourage them to continue to forward messages. We need the citizen’s information to quickly detect suspicious messages,” CCB CEO Miguel De Bruycker underlines.

What was striking in 2023 was the clear breakthrough of phishing via QR codes, called ‘quishing’. “The difference with phishing is that the link in the suspicious message has been replaced by a QR code. The result is the same: you are led to a suspicious website where you are asked to enter your details. This is particularly dangerous for unwary users. After all, when you scan a QR code, you do not immediately see which website it will lead to. It is more difficult to check the URL,” it sounds.

Last year, a striking new message surfaced with the subject line “Meet a Ukrainian girl today.” “The message was forwarded to us en masse,” the CCB said. But what is most striking is that it always does the same messages return annually:

Looking for scammers often a link with current events to attract attention. “When a disaster occurs, it is only a matter of time before the first phishing messages regarding donations appear. During the sales periods, mainly false bargains circulate and at the beginning of the year it is about subscriptions that need to be renewed.”

Less well known, but very dangerous, is the fact that phishing messages can contain attachments containing viruses (malware). If you open those attachments, your device will become infected with that virus. Officer Tesla was the most active malware in 2023, the CCB explains. “We were able to track him down in 545 messages.”

Agent Tesla is an advanced Trojan Horse that specializes in stealing sensitive information from infected devices (a so-called Infostealer).

“There is a fear that with the advance of all kinds AI applicationsphishing messages are becoming increasingly credible,” the CCB warns. “Deepfakes can already be used to imitate voices and video images today. It will become increasingly difficult to distinguish between fake and real messages. The fight against phishing scams is certainly not over yet.”