Private Information Security Concept. Masked hacker using pc, sitting in the dark on couch, stealing big data
the online scams during the holiday period they are growing sharply. According to data from the Postal Police, in fact, last year 31,000 online scams were reported while in 2021, close to the holiday period, the number of reports is approximately double. Among the various scams, the so-called “Package scam”, a phishing attempt that takes place via email or SMS.
The parcel scam is very popular among online scams
The online parcel scam follows a very simple pattern. The victim receives a message like this: “Your package has been held at our dispatch center. Please follow the instructions here ”The message includes a link that takes you to a web page that takes up the typical screenshots of the websites of postal couriers.
At this point, the user is asked to enter payment data, for example to pay alleged customs taxes of a few euros. In this way, the scammers are able to steal the credentials of the card, leading to the phishing attempt.
How to defend yourself
The advice of the Postal Police, which spoke of the online scam of the parcel to TG1, is clear: “The moment I enter these data, they will certainly be able to raid. We must not click on the links but block the sender of the message and delete the SMS “.
Some fundamental aspects need to be taken into consideration. The messages sent by the courier are never anonymous and always include the identification code. Just check the email with which the order confirmation arrived to check if the code shown is correct. In the event of an absent or incorrect code, it will be easy to unmask the online scam attempt.