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With spoofing, internet criminals use tricks to assume a different identity. The fraudster pretends to be your bank, a trusted institution, a family member or other acquaintance. As a so-called “known” sender, he or she tries to obtain your personal information and/or secret bank codes or to immediately extort money from you.
You may have already encountered spoofing: for example, a phishing email in the name of an existing email address or even from your own email address. Spoofing comes in different variants. Read below how you can prevent it.
With email spoofing, you receive an email from an email address that was not sent by the real sender. The message appears to come from the email address of a bank or other known organization. The phishing email can therefore look quite real, especially if the email address appears to be correct. The email often contains a link to a fake website. There you will be asked to enter personal information and secret codes.
Attention! If you fill this in, you give criminals all your details and they can empty your bank account. Never give out your secret codes. Your real bank will never ask for this.
Not sure about the authenticity of the email? Please contact your bank or trusted institution by telephone that appears to have sent the email.
You can also receive a phishing email from your own email address. If this is the case, please contact your hosting service. They can help you secure your email address.
With website spoofing, fraudsters imitate a website of a bank or trusted organization. This often occurs in combination with a fake email or text message. If you click on the link in this fake email or text message, you will end up on a fake website that looks exactly like the real website. Here you will be asked to enter your personal details and secret codes.
Never click on a link in a suspicious email and certainly do not provide personal (bank) codes! Otherwise you give criminals access to all your secret information, and they can, for example, plunder your bank account.
Often the URL in the address bar closely resembles that of the real website, but there are a few letters wrong. Always check this carefully.
You can avoid this spoofing by manually typing the URL in your browser and then comparing it with the URL of the website from the email. Does this not match? Then you are most likely dealing with a fake website!
With telephone number spoofing, the scammers assume another existing telephone number. This trick is often used in computer help desk fraud and vault account fraud.
The same story here too: fraudsters will pretend to be your bank or another known institution and will use excuses to try to get your secret information and codes. Afterwards they empty your bank account. Or they ask you to make a transfer yourself. Never respond to this! Remember: your bank will never ask for your secret codes or transfers via telephone, email or social media. If they do this, then you are dealing with scammers.
Did you share your secret codes? Then immediately take the following steps: