According to the State Police, Equitalia is once again being used by hackers to steal users' bank data. Here's how to defend yourself
When a letter from Equitalia arrives at home, most people start sweating. And it is precisely by exploiting the anxiety exerted by the collection agency on Italian taxpayers, that hackers continue to use it as a weapon of deception and a means to extort money from the poor victims.
To warn against a new attempt at fraud is the "Commissariato di PS online -Italia", a Facebook profile of the State Police. The protagonist, despite himself, is still Equitalia, and the channel used by hackers this time are not emails, but SMS. According to what the Police warns, also publishing a demonstrative photo, users receive a message with which they are "invited", by the false collection agency, to click on a link to obtain a refund. If opened, the link leads to a portal where users are asked to insert their bank data. Of course, it's all a scam.
How to Protect Yourself from Scams
The phishing attempt, again, aims to appropriate victims' credentials. And although the scam mode used is well known, the risk of success, especially among less careful people, is very high. Therefore, it is essential to be careful, starting from the fact that, as suggested by the "Commissariato di PS online -Italia", Equitalia has its own official channels to communicate with taxpayers, which include registered mail and PEC. The rest are just illicit attempts to extort money. Then, a very good trick to unmask a phishing attempt, is to pay attention to the text, normally written in an unformal Italian, especially poor and full of grammatical errors.
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