Customers of Caixa Geral de Depósitos and Montepio Geral have been warned to ditch any emails they receive from their banks “immediately and definitively”.
The national command of PSP police sounded the alert last weekend after a phishing scam from Brazil went out to addresses throughout Portugal.
Correio da Manhã newspaper writes that the moment victims click onto the link in their email fraudsters “can get into their accounts and withdraw all the money”.
It’s not known yet how many people have fallen victim to the con – the latest in a whole universe of scams ongoing on the internet.
Villa rental sites were also warned this weekend of similar scams in which renters are being duped into sending payments “up front” to internet ‘phishers’.
UK-based Owners Direct sent a mail out to owners in Portugal saying “currently these attacks are targeting users of Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail/Outlook.com”.
In all cases, the emails “appear to be real”, say police. The pages of both banks and indeed Owners’ Direct appear to be genuine – however there is one vital clue that people should look out for. As Owners Direct explain: “One tip that we recommend you to follow is to hover over the button you are asked to click or to action on. Please do not click that button, only mouse over it. If you see a link that is not clearly designated as ‘gmail.com’, ‘mail.yahoo.com’, etc., or is a long string of random numbers and letters, it’s not your email provider’s login page or Owners Direct, so do not click.”
In the case of banks, however, another clue is the fact banks do not use emails to ask their customers for banking details.
As the PSP stress, all CGD and Montepio Geral emails should be wiped instantly “without clicking on any of the links that appear in the messages” and without replying to them or forwarding.
Police alert over latest bank scams
