The Republican National Guard issued a national alert about a new type of scam that is arriving directly in the mailboxes of Portuguese citizens. The scheme uses fraudulent letters disguised as official communications from banking institutions, accompanied by physical cards that include the victim's own name. The fraud is based on the concept of quishing, a variation of traditional phishing that replaces email hyperlinks with physical QR codes. In the letter, the scammers claim that the customer's current card is about to expire and pressure the recipient to urgently activate the new plastic card, under the threat of bank account blocking.
To complete the supposed activation process, the user is instructed to scan a QR code with their mobile phone. This action redirects the victim to a fake website that mimics the bank's portal. It is on this platform that home banking access credentials, passwords, card numbers, or banking authentication codes are requested, allowing criminals to carry out illegitimate transfers and identity theft.
The sophistication of the presentation, which combines the use of the financial institution's logo, formal language, personalization with the recipient's name, and the sending of a physical card, aims to increase the credibility of the message. The authority highlights that the senior population is particularly vulnerable to this threat, given the historical tendency to associate physical postal correspondence with authentic and secure communications.
Upon receiving this type of correspondence, citizens should adopt preventive measures, namely not scanning the QR code or accessing the indicated addresses, not contacting the phone numbers listed on the letter, confirming the veracity of the communication through official bank channels, and activating cards exclusively at Multibanco machines or through the bank's official application. If the victim has already entered credentials, they should immediately contact the respective financial institution to proceed with the cancellation of credentials and the blocking of cards. Authorities also advise preserving all received material and filing a report with the security forces.
