The so -called spam and telephone scams have become a persistent problem in Spain, affecting thousands of people every day. What was previously limited to an insistent offer of commercial services has evolved towards much more sophisticated and dangerous practices. A simple call can hide attempts to supplant identity or social engineering techniques with which scammers manage to obtain sensitive personal data. In the most serious cases, these calls end up in unauthorized accesses to bank accounts, fraudulent hiring or even in emptying savings accounts of a lifetime.
One of the most frequent strategies among scammers is to impersonate known companies in the telecommunications sector. With very elaborate speeches and a professional tone, they deceive the user making him believe that the call comes from their usual operator. They allege technical problems, rates updates or supposed errors in invoices with the sole purpose of obtaining private information. This practice is known as Spoofingwhere even The number from the call seems legitimate when coinciding with that of a real company. The resulting confusion favors that many fall into the trap without suspecting it.
As a preventive measure, many users have chosen to register in the Robinson list, a service that allows you to reduce unwanted advertising. However, Its effectiveness has been losing strength over time. Numerous people claim to continue receiving commercial calls despite being registered, which raises doubts about the control and control that exists around the fulfillment of this tool. Given this panorama, the need to strengthen citizen awareness legislation and campaigns grows, since prevention and information have become the main barriers to a phenomenon that does not cease to evolve.
The “router change” scam
María Aperia, a cybersecurity expert that has been announced on social networks with her informative videos about the new inventions in cybercrime, alert of the popularization of this practice among the offenders. At the moment, the company involved that is being supplanted is Movistar and, therefore, its clients are the most affected. “He modus operandi is the following: cybercriminals are going to call by telling you that the modem will change you“, reports as the first movement of evildoers. Likewise, to create a climate of confidence in which the victim feels safe and free of an apparent danger providing certain confidential information.
“They will give you all your data so you think they are really calling you from the company, your name, your email, your address and your phone number,” clarifies. Therefore, it is convenient not to be alarmed but, at the same time, nor do you trust too much. The next step of the scam concerns the sending of an SMS message in which they are requested to be granted a digit that has been sent to your number. “If you give them the code that will come to you by SMS they will automatically change your company“,, the specialist sentenced. In this way, it is always necessary to have caution when carrying out these compromising procedures and being aware of the latest updates.
How to prevent this telephone fraud?
Aperator explains two prevention guidelines before this fraud method. “First of all we have to look very good from what phone number they are calling us, because they don’t call from the original number,” he says. In the case of not knowing the indicated number by heart, it can be consulted with the Internet based on seconds. “Never, under any circumstances, we must give a person who is calling us a code that has come to us by SMS because they will normally use it to hack us, steal accounts or money,” he adds. Finally, in the event that the victim has already been scammed, it recommends the following: “If you have already fallen into this scam it is very important that you never sign nothing that comes to you by mail, They send you a contract with which they then make the company“