Lower Silesian police are warning against this form of online fraud, which is becoming increasingly common. Thieves steal a person’s identity, impersonate them and, exploiting trust, ask their relatives and friends to provide a “BLIK” code or transfer money to purchase goods.
A resident of Jelenia Góra learned how fraudsters operate when she believed she was communicating with someone impersonating her son and transferred nearly PLN 4,000 to a specified account to buy a mobile phone that had allegedly broken down for her son. The fraudster then tried to persuade the victim to make another payment in a similar way, this time for a laptop, but she realized that she was dealing with an attempted fraud.
Let us remain vigilant and not be misled by appearances. Let us read carefully the messages received on our phones during every transaction, as well as messages from friends and relatives. This form of contact may turn out to be nothing more than an ordinary fraud. We may lose our savings. It is therefore worth confirming such a conversation by calling the person asking us for money or at least sending an SMS to their phone number and waiting for a reply.
Criminals exploit the inattention of people using computers, mobile phones and other devices with Internet access and hack into their accounts. For this reason, Lower Silesian police remind us of several important points:
- let us protect our access passwords and remember to ensure that the codes we enter cannot be deciphered by unauthorized persons. For safety, let us change them every few months;
- let us remember to log out of applications every time we finish using them;
- let us not open emails from unknown senders, and above all, the attachments contained in them;
- fraudsters often impersonate bank websites or popular auction and social-media portals. Let us remember not to enter our login or password if we have any doubts.