Belgians are facing more and more phishing attacks

Belgians are facing more and more phishing attacks. Hundreds of citizens have received e-mails from police authorities in recent days, including former Federal Commissioner-General for Police and current Europol chief Catherine De Bolle. This was stated on Thursday by the Belga news agency, according to which it was a so-called phishing, an attempt at fraud, which does not need to be reacted to. The electronic call was simple. The winning e-mails claimed that the recipient was guilty of spreading child pornography, pedophilia, exhibitionism or cyber pornography. According to the Police Cybercrime Unit, their purpose was to gain access to the bank details of the blackmailers. Phishing is a type of cyber-attack in which fraudsters use bait in electronic communications to solicit and unauthorisedly obtain personal information from users, such as passwords, usernames, and other credit card details. The data obtained can be misused for extortion, theft of money or theft of identity. The Belgian Cybercrime Unit drew attention to similar e-mails last March, when their authors covered not only the name of Catherine De Bolle, but also the current Federal Commissioner General of the Federal Police, Marc De Mesmaeker. In July this year, the Belga news agency drew attention to a survey by the consumer organization Test Achats, according to which up to 80 percent of Belgians have already been confronted with phishing attacks. A survey of 1,300 respondents indicated that the most common forms of this type of attack were e-mail (52.7 percent) and SMS (47.6 percent) fraud. This is followed by phone scams (26.8 percent), followed by scams via mobile applications such as Messenger and WhatsApp (18.4 percent).