How to Protect Yourself from Hacker Emails Pretending to be Official Government Services

2023-05-20 20:07:14

Hackers pretend to be the federal service in order to get you to open an attachment…

It is a veritable deluge of infected emails to which some Belgian Internet users are subjected – who have the misfortune to appear on a list of email addresses sold on the dark net. For the past few days, they have been receiving emails from a so-called federal service with “instructions” to follow in order to comply.

The emails discussed here can take different forms. In the few examples that we were able to consult, however, it was generally a question of a very short message inviting the Internet user to open the attachment, a PDF document infected with a virus which contaminates the computer or the smartphone of its victim. as soon as it is opened.

In your mailbox, messages appear this way.

This week alone, one of our readers told us he had received four such emails.

Very often, it is curiosity or concern that pushes the Internet user to commit the irreparable by opening the attachment of this type of email. The email is often marked as “urgent” and appears to have been sent from an official source. The Internet user wonders if it is an official summons or a document from the SPF and wants to check for himself.

Luckily, a savvy person easily avoids this type of scam. First of all because the sender of the message can easily be identified as false, the message being sent with a private address. Then, because an official communication would reach you by post and not by email.