In recent days, many Italian users display messages that announce the winning of top-of-the-line Samsung and Xiaomi smartphones. It is, however,
Who has never happened, surfing the web from a smartphone or PC, to come across mysterious pop-up messages that announced the winning of smartphones of all kinds? All of us, for better or worse, have lived this experience and many, unfortunately, have fallen for it. Obviously we should not believe these promises of winnings because they are nothing but a scam.
As reported by the Postal Police through the Facebook page Una Vita da Social, in recent days thousands of Italian users are the subject of an attempt to scam online in full swing. The potential victim is lured with a fake winning message (it can be a lottery, a trip or as in this case a Samsung or Xiaomi smartphone) and to collect the prize you have to click on a link in the popup. Needless to say, you should never fall for a stratagem like this: it is one of the most popular scam attempts and used by hackers more or less skilled.
Smartphone gift scam, how it works
As you can read on the Facebook profile of the Postal Police, surfing online we can come across strange messages that inform us about the winning of a smartphone Samsung or Xiaomi last generation. We are invited to click or press on a link, to provide personal data and the shipping address of the lucky win. It goes without saying that there is no free phone waiting for us, but we are simply giving away our data to unscrupulous hackers who will exploit them for their own personal gain.
How to defend yourself against the smartphone gift scam
Unfortunately, understanding that this is a scam and that we will not win any top of the range Samsung phone is quite simple. First, let's remember that online, as well as in everyday life nothing is a gift. Second, we always avoid clicking on links, attachments and pop-up messages that we find online, in our inbox and even on the various social media we use. Very often behind these seemingly harmless items are the traps of a cyber criminal. To understand that it is not a real win then often just read the text of the message. Most hackers generate this type of scam the same for users from different countries and this means that the message is translated with an online translation service that does not always create convincing texts, indeed very often we will find syntax and grammatical errors. So let's pay attention to what we read online even if it seems as interesting as winning a Samsung Galaxy S9. Finally, remember to never enter our personal information, such as address, age, social security number and especially credit card to receive in return any winnings promised on the Net. Almost always in fact behind these fake winnings there are cyber criminals who aim to steal our information to use our identity for their illegal purposes.