This Saturday, July 23, hundreds of fraudulent emails were sent to taxpayers in Wallonia. It is even possible that the fraud is national.
The offending emails ask taxpayers to make a payment or announce that they will receive a so-called refund.
In both cases, the consequences of this scam can be significant, either due to the payments made by the victims or the hacking of their personal data.
These phishing practices (also called “phishing”) are “a recurring problem”, said Florence Angelici, spokesperson for the SPF Finances, on Tuesday.
“We have a page on our website which reminds us of the measures to follow when we receive an email claiming to come from the SPF Finances.”
These consist of verifying a series of data. Thus, the sender’s email address must end with @minfin.fed.be or @mailing.minfin.fed.be.
The bank account into which money is requested must also have the following form: BEXX 6792 XXXX XXXX.
It is also possible to recognize fraud attempts by identifying e-mails that are insistent or threatening, contain spelling errors, request confidential bank details, claim to come from a bailiff’s office or contain an announcement that is too beautiful to be true or unexpected.
In 2021, the FPS Finances received 14,905 phishing reports, i.e. more than 40 per day.
This number is arguably higher in reality because phishing attempts often go unreported. In some cases, the recipients are not even aware that it is a scam.