The scammers are using a technique called spoofing to deceive victims, making a legitimate entity's number, such as a bank or association, appear on their mobile phone. The number that appears on the screen is genuine, but the call itself is false, taking advantage of the trust people place when they recognize a known contact.
The spoofing trick allows falsifying the identification of a call's origin, showing on the screen a different number from where the contact is actually being made. This way, criminals manage to manipulate the caller's identification without the victim realizing they are being deceived.
The Portuguese Banking Association (APB) recently issued an alert about this situation, revealing that scammers were presenting themselves falsely as employees of the association. The goal of these criminals is to obtain victims' banking data through fraudulent calls.
In some cases, the scammers even manage to make the general number of the Portuguese Banking Association itself appear on the victim's mobile phone, increasing the credibility of the call and making it more difficult to suspect its authenticity.
