Fraud attempts using fake messages will increase in the pre-Christmas period. “Most often, these are text messages saying that you have underpaid, e.g. for a parcel, to pay your energy bill or to verify the amount of your tax refund”, warns the Minister of Digitisation Krzysztof Gawkowski and reminds people that such scam attempts should be reported. “This can be done free of charge by sending a message to the number 8080, where specialists from CERT Polska will check whether there has been a phishing attempt, added Deputy Prime Minister Gawkowski.
As the Ministry of Digitalisation reminds us, almost everyone has at least once received a suspicious text message telling them, for example, about winning a competition or the need to pay e.g. the gas bill. However, the devil is in the details. Before clicking on a link sent in a fake message, it is worth examining its content. Often there are linguistic errors, missing punctuation, incorrect sentence syntax. This alone should arouse our vigilance.
„In November this year, CERT Polska registered over 18 thousand reports on fake SMS. Compared to the previous year, this is a huge increase – by over 159 %. In December, on the other hand, CERT specialists received over 53 thousand reports on suspicious messages”, emphasised Minister Gawkowski.
Iwona Prószyńska, a CERT specialist, adds that the institution also maintains a register of malicious domains that are included in the list of warnings.
“So far more than 160,000 domains have been included in this list. They include websites used, among others, for phishing, logging into online banking or email”, she explained.
“In 2022 alone, more than 20 million attempts to access sites on this list have been blocked. By informing CERT about phishing attempts, we not only help ourselves, but also all other users who could potentially be scammed. This is an extremely important, preventive element of our activities. Specialists are on duty 24 hours a day and I can assure you that each notification is analysed and all those who turn to CERT for help will receive it”, assured the Minister of Digitalisation.
Adrian Andrzejewski