Homebanking circumvents continue to grow in Portugal and the Judiciary Police (PJ) are closely following an increasingly difficult phenomenon. Among the latest forms used by criminals comes Pharmning, a silent method that deceives users even when they believe they are in a safe environment.
According to the website O Jornal Económico, which specializes in financial information, PJ has opened 2,181 phishing inquiries in the last two years. Within this universe, 509 cases involved fraudulent access to online bank accounts. The number helps to perceive the dimension of the problem and the pressure on the authorities and financial institutions.
How Pharming works
The technique is distinguished by not depending only on false links or misleading messages. In PhaRming, strikers install malicious software on personal or mobile computers. This program allows the overlap of fake windows on real homebanking pages.
The user, convinced that he is on his bank’s legitimate platform, ends up entering access data and validation codes. It is with this information that criminals make bank transfers without permission.
Unlike other easy -to -identify schemes, this scam creates a virtually indistinguishable environment on the official page, which increases the risk of experienced victims to be deceived.
Response of institutions
Given this threat, the Portuguese Banks Association has been intensifying awareness campaigns with customers. The goal is to reinforce precautionary messages such as not installing dubious origin programs, always check the address of the visited page and distrust unexpected data update orders.
PJ also underlines the importance of digital literacy. According to the same source, the greater the knowledge about the mechanisms of fraud, the lower the hypotheses of success for the burns.
Authorities also consider that it is necessary to reinforce preventive measures, either in reinforced authentication of access to homebanking or in monitoring suspicious transactions.
A growth challenge
Pharming emerges as a new chapter in the digital circumstances catalog. Although phishing campaigns remain common, this more sophisticated technique allows criminals to act almost invisibly. The ease with which the user can be induced in error makes the scenario even more worrying for banks and authorities.
According to the ongoing surveys reveal a clear tendency for the evolution of online scams. PJ has no doubt that prevention will go through both the technological reinforcement of the systems and the permanent attention of users.
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