Birgitta Lennerstrand was waiting for an important shipment from her son in the US when she received a text message claiming to be from PostNord. There was a link to a page where she was asked to pay a shipping fee to get her package. At first she became angry, but did not suspect it was a scam.

-I clicked on to see what was next. And when it was then that I would pay, I might become suspicious, but more towards Postnord than anything else. The scams were not in my head then, she says.

The fraudsters are constantly finding new ways

She is not alone, Postnord has noticed a wave of this type of scam SMS in recent weeks.

“The viewers are making every effort to find new solutions to fish money and we of course try to stay ahead of it. But it is a difficult race. They will find new ways, and we will find new countermeasures, says Alexis Larsson, security manager at Postnord.

Police: It will increase

It is easy and inexpensive for criminals to come across many email addresses or phone numbers and make great scams. Since very few police reports, it is difficult to say exactly how big the problem is.

-Because it is so easy and cheap to carry out and so difficult to get to grips with, of course, there are and this will of course increase, says Jan Olsson at the police's national IT crime center.

It is usually about relatively small sums. In Birgitta's case she would pay 19.96: -

-If you send out to 10,000 or 100,000 people it will be money in the end. And this they know. And then it should be clear to you that these international organized leagues operate in this way, they do not only attack in Sweden, they take the whole of the north, all of Europe, says Jan Olsson.

"Terrible not to be able to trust people"

Birgitta never paid, so she has not lost any money on this - but trust has gotten a thorn.

-I think it's so naughty. It's boring, I think. It's horrible not to be able to trust people, she says