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Kortrijk In the Vlas police zone, at least two people have lost about 1,500 euros together in the past few days due to scams via SMS and a false internet link. Both allegedly had to deal with a blocked bank card. In an effort to remedy that situation, they unsuspectingly provided the scammers with crucial data that would allow them to withdraw money from the account.
“We already received several reports this month from people who were the victim of (an attempt) of fraud via SMS and the Internet,” said Thomas Detavernier, spokesman for the Vlas police zone. “It is remarkable that the victims are not always elderly or people who are not very familiar with the internet (banking). People who are online on a daily basis and who carry out banking transactions via the internet have also been scammed. So it can happen to any of us if we are equally inattentive or distracted. ”
No suspicion
Last Monday evening, a man from Kortrijk received a text message. He was informed in the name of Card Stop that his bank card had been blocked. This could be remedied by surfing to a link that was sent with the text message. Unsuspectingly, the victim clicked on the link (cardstop.portaal.int) and promptly arrived at a Card Stop website. Or so he thought. Because in reality it was a page that looked particularly credible, so that the victim did not harbor suspicion. The man was asked to enter his account number and pin code and accepted. Eventually he got a message that his card was unblocked again. But shortly afterwards the man found that a few hundred euros had disappeared from his account.
Smishing
“Three days later, the same thing happened to someone else,” says Thomas Detavernier. “That person lost 1,200 euros. This is painful, of course, especially when you know that Card Stop never asks or offers information in that way to unblock your card via text message. If you do receive such a message, you are the victim of an attempt at ‘smishing’ or SMS phishing, a fraudulent technique whereby criminals ‘fish’ for personal information with which they can steal or scam you.
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