2024-08-13 06:35:44
The perpetrators cover the barcodes on the cards with a manipulated version and then hang the vouchers back on the sales stands. When customers pay money into them at the checkout, the money is not deposited on the voucher but on the perpetrators’ account. Customers only notice the fraud when they realize that the voucher cannot be redeemed.
Anyone who has fallen into the trap should “act quickly and report it to the police and also inform the provider that fraud has occurred,” Erfurt police told Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR).
Will customers get their money back? The legal situation is unclear, according to Ralf Reichertz, head of the consumer law department at the Thuringian consumer advice center. However, the consumer advocate believes that the supermarket operator has a responsibility. He must pay the customer the correct amount, he told MDR. He also advises having the barcodes checked carefully at the checkout beforehand.
The Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) is warning of a new form of the grandparent scam. “Artificial intelligence will soon make it possible to perfectly imitate the real voices of grandchildren,” BSI President Claudia Plattner told “Stern”. The person being called will then no longer be able to tell the difference.
Plattner advises consumers to inform their grandparents about these types of deception attempts. “It’s best to practice this situation with grandma and grandpa and agree on a code word that you would say in case of doubt – for example, the name of your first pet,” says the expert.
Last year, the Thuringia Consumer Advice Center warned of this attempted scam. “Pay attention to small irregularities in the voice – such as choppy-sounding fragments of words – in order to unmask a possible scam,” said Ralf Reichertz, head of the consumer law department at the Thuringia Consumer Advice Center at the time.
In the so-called grandparent scam, fraudsters deliberately call older people. They pretend to be their grandchildren and claim to be in an emergency. Sometimes someone calls pretending to be a police officer to increase the credibility of the story and put more pressure on the potential victims.
Amazon has a number of customers in Germany. It is therefore not surprising that users of the platform are repeatedly targeted by fraudsters. An email is currently circulating in which customers are asked to update their payment details. This was reported by the information portal “Mimikama”. The account is allegedly in a “holding loop” – i.e. temporarily blocked – due to “billing problems”.
The email asks you to click on a button to update your payment information and reactivate your account. To underline the supposed urgency of the matter, it says that the data must be updated within 24 hours. This can lead to those affected reacting immediately out of fear of losing their account and thus falling into the scammers’ net.
“Mimikama” points out that there are some elements that reveal the email to be a scam. For example, the Amazon logo is missing and the farewell message only contains the words “Thank you”, which is not what a reputable company would write. Anyone who receives this message should delete it without replying or move it to the spam folder.
An attentive bank employee in Augsburg prevented an elderly lady from being cheated out of a large sum of money last week. As the “Augsburger Allgemeine” newspaper reports, the 70-year-old woman received a so-called shock call in the early afternoon, in which unknown people pretended to be police officers. The caller told the woman that her daughter had been in an accident abroad in which someone had died. The fake police officer demanded cash in order to release the daughter.
The 70-year-old then drove to her bank and withdrew a sum in the low five-figure range. She was supposed to hand this money over to a messenger at the Augsburg District Court, it is said. But then a bank employee intervened, finding the woman’s behavior strange. He stopped her and informed the “real” police. They are now investigating fraud.
The consumer advice center is warning of a new scam in which cyber criminals are trying to lure Commerzbank customers into a trap with phishing emails, asking them to update their customer data.
The subject is: “Update your profile for improved security in online banking”. However, upon closer inspection, there are signs of an attempted fraud. The first sign is the impersonal greeting “Dear Commerzbank customer”. In addition, the dubious sender address also points to phishing.
The claim contained in the emails that the bank has recently updated its systems – in particular the PhotoTAN process – serves as a pretext to obtain sensitive customer data. The recipients are asked to log into their online banking account and update their profile. To do this, they are asked to click on the “Update profile now” button.
However, the consumer advice center strongly warns against complying with this request. “Banks would never request such sensitive data,” the organization emphasizes, and advises “moving such emails unanswered to the spam folder.”
To protect customers from such scams, the consumer advice center has set up a phishing radar. Consumers can find out about current phishing emails there. Anyone who receives a suspicious message can forward it to the North Rhine-Westphalia consumer advice center ([email protected]). The center then analyses the emails and informs the public about new fraud attempts if necessary.
It sounds too good to be true: German national football team jerseys at half price, cheap branded grills for TV evenings in the garden – consumer advice centers are currently noticing an increasing number of suspicious online providers who are targeting football fans. Anyone who is unsure whether they are dealing with a fake shop can get an initial assessment using the consumer advice centers’ fake shop finder.
For example, consumer protection agencies warn against the alleged jersey shops emsports.de and funftball.com. The verification mechanisms also raise the alarm about addresses such as gartenshop-marsmann.de, flammenfreude.de and saroni-handel.de.
“It is questionable whether the goods will ever arrive,” say the consumer centers. “The sites contain quality seals and certificates that are sometimes non-transparent, no or incomplete imprint, alleged business addresses that are in residential areas, or false sales tax IDs.” In addition, there are negative reports from consumers.
HypoVereinsbank customers are currently being targeted by cyber criminals. According to the consumer advice center, an increasing number of emails are appearing with the subject “Final reminder: Update your phone number for your HypoVereinsbank account.” The message states that an update of the contact details is supposedly necessary. Customers should update their phone number in order to be reachable more quickly “in the event of suspicious activity.”
To do this, you should click on a link where you can enter your information. The email looks inconspicuous and professional and could therefore create a false sense of security. Only the lack of a personal greeting (“Dear customer”) and the sender’s email address are suspicious. The consumer advice center advises moving the message to the spam folder without answering it.
The fraud ticker has been re-established: You can find the old ticker with further scams here.