SMS Spoofing and thus we can avoid falling into the scam

Be very careful with telephone scams: the banking sector has been warning for days of what is known as SMS Spoofing, that is, the impersonation of a company to perpetuate a scam by text message.

Spoofing consists of impersonating a company, entity, or person to obtain private information from users and carry out frauds and scams through the internet. We received an SMS on our phone that, presumably, comes from a secure number and that identifies itself as our bank, asking to do a simple procedure.

However, nothing is further from the truth: they contain a link that takes us to replicas of our banking portals to steal our data. They have used an 'alias' to hide the true origin and give it a truthful appearance, with the name of our bank or Bizum.

"Your card cannot be used. You have to activate the new web security system" or "We invite you to quickly confirm your information to avoid a restriction or suspension of your account" (sic). These are two examples of messages that invite you to follow suspicious links and are aimed at obtaining our information.

To carry out any procedure you must always access through the customer area of ​​your bank, as recommended by Incibe, and avoid using this kind of link.

What to do if we receive one of them? The best thing is to block the number from which we have received it and delete the message.

To prevent our data from being stolen with similar scams, we can follow these steps detailed by the cybersecurity branch of BBVA, one of the affected companies :

• Do not provide personal information on web pages that you have accessed from a link included in an email or SMS. Remember that secure web pages always start with https and show a closed padlock.

• Be suspicious of alarming emails and do not download attachments in this type of communication. Check the sender carefully and be wary if it contains strange words or characters or misspellings.

• Download the applications from official markets, such as Google Play, App Store, etc.

• Change the username and password that come by default in the router for more robust and secure credentials.

• Install and keep antivirus and antimalware running on your devices.

• Always keep your browser, applications, and operating system updated.