Help, the police are calling! Anyone who has ever seen the number 110 on the display will remember the fright. And if you don’t, you can certainly imagine it. In fact, in this case, it is not the police who are on the other end of the line, but scammers. Behind this is a special scam called spoofing.
Nowadays, scammers are getting more and more creative to get users’ data. These are now worth quite a bit and can quickly be misused in the event of theft. So-called spoofing describes a particularly perfidious scam.
What is spoofing?
The term “spoofing” comes from the English, in which “to spoof” means something like “to fake”. So spoofing is about falsifying or faking something.
In this case, scammers pretend to be trustworthy people or authorities. Examples include the aforementioned call from the police or an email from a ministry or bank. With technical aids, the scammers make it appear as if the call or message actually came from a secure source.
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How to protect yourself from spoofing
In fact, the best protection against such scams as spoofing is vigilance. With e-mails, for example, you should never click on links that are not definitely secure. In such a case, it is better to check whether you can access the corresponding page via the homepage of the designated sender. If in doubt, always check with the official source yourself. For example, if you get what you think is a message from your bank, call them and ask them specifically.
Because spoofing incidents are increasing, there are also official measures against the scam. Consumers should be better protected against call ID spoofing in the future. The term refers to concealing one’s own telephone number in order to pretend that the police are calling.
More security for consumers
Since December 1, telecommunications providers have had to take technical measures to ensure that calls that incorrectly display the emergency numbers 110 and 112 as well as the expensive numbers (0)900 and (0)137 as well as numbers for information and speed dialing services such as the Federal Network Agency communicates. In addition, providers must ensure that calls from foreign networks do not show a German phone number on the display. In such cases, the number display must be suppressed. An exception to this are mobile phone numbers in international roaming, the authority continues.
Due to the anonymization obligation, there will be more calls with suppressed numbers. However, the Federal Network Agency also points out that not every call of this type is necessarily dubious: callers could also decide to block their number for legitimate reasons. The aim of the new protective measure is for consumers to be able to rely on calls they receive from a German number that the rightful number owner is really at the other end of the line.
With information from the dpa.