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04 December 2019An authoritative, persuasive and professional voice. And a request that could turn out to be a trap. The new frontier of cybercrime runs on the telephone line, the 'vishing' - Anglo-Saxon neologism born from the fusion of 'voice' and 'phishing' - which explains well how the goal of the fraudster on duty is the same as the 'colleague' who relies on traditional phishing, e-mail: induce the victim to disclose personal, financial or security information or to transfer money. The operation by which the police post has dismantled an association, based in the Neapolitan hinterland but active throughout Italy, which thanks to vishing has stolen data and cards from thousands of customers and defrauded over one million euros , turns the spotlight on this particular type of deception but the alarm is not new. And already a year ago, more or less these days, the same postal police from the columns of its site alerted on a "new wave of scams" and invited users to distrust those, for example, by presenting themselves on the phone just like a police inspector and "giving various reasons, asks us for the code to unlock our Postepay card".

The threat, at least ten years old and typical above all of the United States and the United Kingdom, has recently been imported also into Europe and Italy and follows a very tried and tested pattern, which is quite recognizable. Who calls - to a fixed number or on the mobile - usually says to belong to the call center of a credit institution and warns that our credit card has been the subject of a scam or a fraud attempt: hence the request to provide a whole range of personal information - particularly the pin - to confirm that the title data is still protected. To lower the level of defense of the potential victim, contributes the fact that the self-styled banking operator actually knows the number of the card he says he wants to check, number stolen with theft (as in the case ascertained today) or sophisticated social engineering techniques. How to defend yourself? At least three key recommendations come from the police post. The first: "be wary of telephone numbers that we do not know and through which we have received requests regarding personal data, bank details or unlock codes". The second: "do not provide access credentials to your online banking services". The third: "contact the nearest police office to report what has happened and receive further advice". Attention also to a further, no less devious variant of cyber attack, known as 'smishing', or phishing that travels via sms: in this case on our smartphone a message will come with which we are asked, even with the promise of a discount or a promotion, to contact a certain phone number or to connect to a certain site. Which, however, is almost always a clone site, in all respects similar to that of the bank.