Röbel (dpa/mv) - Wrong bank employees cheated a woman from a village near Röbel (Mecklenburg Lake District) out of 15,000 euros. The 46-year-old fell for the so-called smishing trick, as a police spokeswoman said on Wednesday. With "smishing", cyber criminals steal confidential access data with the help of SMS. In this specific case, an unknown person called the woman a few days ago and pretended to be an employee of a local savings bank. He explained that her account had been hacked and had to be blocked. A link is sent to the woman via WhatsApp for this purpose. The woman followed the caller's warning and clicked on the link provided in the message.
As a result, a deceptively real fake website of the bank appeared, on which the bank details were entered. The perpetrators thus had access to the account without being noticed and were gradually able to withdraw money, so that the damage totaled 15,000 euros.
Many bank customers are aware of the dangers associated with clicking on a link in an email, the spokeswoman said. It is much less well known what dangers lurk in an SMS or WhatsApp message. The police advised not to react to such links, even if your own bank is shown as the sender. If in doubt, customers should contact their bank by telephone.
