As social tension rises and the economic situation worsens, dishonest people driven by greed are increasingly trying to obtain confidential information by means of email messages. The national e-service “Inbox.lv” is concerned about the growing threat and urges email users to be careful and not to disclose important data to third parties.
The national e-service “Inbox.lv” urges users to always check the web address in the browser before logging into the portal, and to use only the “encrypted login”.
The national e-service “Inbox.lv” also urges users to choose harder-to-guess passwords combining letters and numbers, rather than using their username, or words such as “password”, “1234”, etc., as a password.
Given that passwords are required on many Latvian internet resources, the national e-service “Inbox.lv” urges users to choose a different password for each of them, because if fraudsters get hold of such a single shared password, it gives them access to the maximum amount of the user’s data on other internet resources as well.
Unfortunately, too much information that is important to the customer is lost not because of the fraudsters’ skill, but because of users’ inattention and overly careless attitude.
Fraudulent emails, or “phishing” (derived from the English word “fishing”), are sent with the aim of luring various confidential data out of users, such as access passwords for online banking or other important resources.
The messages received are often written in a businesslike style, making the recipient believe the message is authentic. The illusion is reinforced by the sender information, which may be disguised in the message to make it look genuine.
The national e-service “Inbox.lv” said that users are often asked, on behalf of banks, to send payment card numbers and CVV codes, as well as data from the customer’s online banking code card.
Fraudsters also invite users, for various reasons, to visit fake pages that look similar to online banking, where the customer, without even suspecting it, may hand over their data to the swindlers.
Sometimes hackers pose as email server administrators and try to obtain the access data for a user’s email account, or use email to try to infect computers for further data theft.
The national e-service “Inbox.lv” stresses that it never sends emails asking users to provide passwords or other confidential information. Likewise, banks and other service providers will never request customer data by email or phone, such as online banking passwords, code card numbers, payment card numbers and codes.
Such emails are sent all over the world regardless of the chosen e-service provider, and the larger an e-service’s customer base, the greater the chance that fraudsters are among them. However, a great deal depends on how well informed email users are about such threats.
If a user has received such a message, the national e-service “Inbox.lv” asks them to inform the support service (email support@inbox.lv) or to press the “Report spam” button. In case of any doubt, contact the institutions that supposedly sent the email to verify its authenticity or to report the sending of fake messages.
About the national e-service Inbox.lv
The internet portal www.inbox.lv of SIA «Inbokss» was established in 1998. With more than five million registered users, it is currently the largest internet portal in Latvia offering a variety of free services. In terms of traffic, according to «TNS Latvia» and «Gemius» research data, the portal ranks first among Latvian websites, with the number of unique users exceeding 700 thousand per week and 800 thousand per month.
