If you have received an unusual and urgent message on the phone, you should be careful with your reaction these days. On behalf of O2 you may be informed that a new number is supposedly needed. However, this is the case SMS scam .
Blatant SMS fraud: this is what O2 advises its customers
The Futurezone.de editorial team alone has received several corresponding messages in recent days. The text of the SMS scam is always the same: “Dear O2 customer, your phone number will be disconnected. For further use, continue here. […]“. A link is then provided for recipients to click.
At first you barely notice that this is not a real notification, because the message is sent via an O2 number with the prefix 0176, it contains no spelling errors or unusual texts and the URL also looks serious at first glance. The first time you think of SMS fraud is when you receive the exact same message from another 0176 number.
As O2 itself warned months ago, cybercriminals are behind this: “If you follow the link, you will be asked to log in with your My O2 account details on a non-O2 page. The goal is to misuse your data, for example by ordering mobile phones in your name and at your expense.”
Here's what you can do to prevent fraud attempts
To protect yourself, the provider recommends being wary of spam messages and not clicking on any links: “Our official O2 links always point to the pages O2.de or O2online.de. You are also safe with our short links, which we always send with g.O2.de, eggO2.de/O2_app. Links to other domains are not O2!”
However, if you have already transmitted information, these options remain:
- Change all passwords and customer personal identification numbers.
- Sign in to O2. There you can configure that your own data is not displayed in “My O2” as long as there is a suspicion that others may have obtained access to it.
- Please pay attention to all text messages and emails that indicate that your details have been changed or that unwanted orders have been placed.
Sources: own research, O2.
By Dana Neumann