The authorities are warning consumers on Black Friday of super-deals from the United States, which create record orders worldwide, including on the Internet. Safeonweb, the federal centre for cybercrime information, is consequently calling for caution during online purchases, in particular concerning the risk of phishing.
Through this ploy, criminals send false e-mails, which sometimes bear a strong resemblance to messages from genuine banks and other institutions, so as to recover consumer data. Safeonweb on its Twitter page recommends, “If a given promotion is too good to be true, generally you should be suspicious.”
Moreover, this information centre led a major awareness-raising campaign around cyber-security. It set up an e-mail address (suspect@safeonweb.be) where anybody could transfer messages that they considered suspicious. These were then automatically scanned by advanced anti-virus technology. Some 85,000 e-mails were collected at the address. Due to this, the authorities are succeeding in blocking at least three new phishing Internet sites each day.
The Brussels Times
