The Poles are being deceived more and more often. when will this end

The media in Poland regularly informs and warns about numerous, often well-prepared scams, which is why their number should decrease due to (theoretically) greater attention to potential victims. Well, it turns out it only seems so, because the reality is quite different – ​​Poles are increasingly being targeted by scammers.

Poles are a treat for scammers

Probably, most readers of Tabletowo.pl have at least once received an SMS with information about the alleged delivery or underpayment of the utility bill. In the first case, failure to pay the additional fee should result in the parcel not being delivered, and in the second case, the electricity will soon be cut off. However, both are about the same – providing online banking credentials or a payment card that gives criminals access to the victim’s money. Sometimes it even happens that they enter into additional financial liabilities (loans, credits), leaving the victim not only with a balanced account, but also with debts.

State institutions and private media often provide information about how fraudsters work, and information spots appear in the information space to draw attention to the lurking threats – a number of such were prepared, among others, by the Office for Competition and Consumer Protection. It seems that this should effectively deter criminals – because if there is a lot of talk about it, more and more people must be resistant to such scams. However, it turns out differently.

According to data from Digitization Minister Janusz Cieszyński, published today by Rzeczpospolita, the Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT; one of its tasks is to record and process network security incidents) registered 7,622 phishing attacks in 2020, and a year later even 22,575. In 2022 there were even more – 25,625. As you can see, their numbers are increasing instead of decreasing. Poles are therefore a very tasty morsel for scammers.

Recently, the Supreme Audit Office also published a report stating that in 2019 and 2020 ~70,000 cybercrimes were reported to the police (of which ~50,000 were online scammers), and in 2021 (until October) ~60,000 (of which ~40,000 online). Fraud). These figures show that criminals are not relentlessly trying to defraud Poland of their money. In 2020-2022, prosecutors conducted 336 cases using the phishing method.

Will the Poles stop being deceived?

Of course not. The fact is that Poles are the weakest link in the chain of any scam, although it often doesn’t even take much effort to realize that it’s an extortion/theft attempt. But that doesn’t mean nobody will do anything about it.

Back in February, Janusz Cieszyński (State Secretary, Government Plenipotentiary for Cybersecurity) and Jacek Oko (President of the Office for Electronic Communications) announced the implementation of solutions to protect Poles from phishing and smishing – they are designed to prevent the delivery of fraudulent messages to mobile subscribers.

The draft law on combating abuse in electronic communications, which aims to implement protection mechanisms, has already been submitted to the Sejm. Janusz Cieszyński told rp.pl the law will come into force after the holidays and will solve a large part of the problemsA All blocked content will be published after 14 daysso that interested parties can know which messages operators have blocked before delivery.

Importantly, the cited law also aims to prevent spoofing, i.e. impersonating someone during a phone call – scammers sometimes call from someone’s phone number (virtually, not real), which also poses a major threat.

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