A new scam linked to the loyalty program of the phone company Vodafone is putting at risk the personal data of Italian users, how to defend yourself
In the Internet in recent hours is spreading a new computer scam that affects users pretending to be from promotions campaign linked to the loyalty program of Vodafone. The purpose of cyber criminals in this case is to collect the personal data of users who will fall into the trap.
On social media and on some of email addresses have appeared fake messages from Vodafone that announce to users of winning a Samsung Galaxy S9, an iPad Pro or an iPhone X of their choice. The company would like to reward us as we have been, for years, loyal Vodafone customers. The message tells us that only 100 users across Italy have been selected and that we will only have 3 minutes to confirm the prize that we want to arrive comfortably at home. To confirm the prize we will have to click on the link attached to the text that will redirect us to a page in which to enter some personal data. The request is justified as a questionnaire useful for the delivery of the prize, but in reality it is just an excuse to steal our information devised by hackers.
How to defend yourself against the Vodafone gift scam
This computer scam acts like many others of its kind. You contact the victim and make them believe that they are the winner of a valuable item. In order to convince the user to click on the attached link, a time limit is also included within which to click on the link in order to confirm the win. The clicker ends up on a page that copies the graphical interface of the Vodafone site, but which has absolutely no original URL of the portal of the famous telephone company. All the data entered in the fake site will be stolen by cyber criminals who will use them to use our online identity for their criminal activities.
In order not to fall into this trap, the main advice is not to believe this kind of win or gift messages, even if they are coming from what seem to be the profiles of a famous international company. Secondly, we should never, for any reason, enter our personal data on a website of which we do not know the reliability.