Criminals steal bank money through online scam

Since the spring, people in Finland have been targeted by aggressive phishing campaigns in which criminals have gotten access to online banking credentials and have been able to steal money from people's bank accounts, said the National Police Board in a press release on Thursday.

Fraudulent websites that appear genuine have been set up in the name of banks, in particular. The latest campaign has used a fake website for My Kanta Pages.

When victims enter their online banking credentials on a malicious website, criminals gain access to their bank accounts.

The Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela), the police and the National Cyber Security Centre Finland (NCSC-FI) at the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency advised people to be careful when logging in to online services.

Criminals are phishing banking credentials by contacting people in the name of Finnish banks and My Kanta Pages.

Scam messages phishing bank details are sent by SMS and email. Victims are also lured to scam websites via links among search engine results.

Search engines (e.g. Bing and Google) are currently the most common route to the fake My Kanta Pages website.

The police urged people to never log in to My Kanta Pages directly from a link among search engine results.

If anyone suspects that your bank details have fallen into the wrong hands, he or she was asked to immediately contact with own bank and also report the fraud to the police.

The police also suggested to the people to type the whole address of bank’s website into the browser's address bar to ensure safety of the online banking.

Bookmarking the address of online bank and advised and urged never go to online bank via search engine results. Using bank’s own mobile application is also suggested.

Criminals have managed to steal bank details and transfer large sums of money from their victims’ bank accounts.

They have targeted, in particular, persons aged 60 years and older.

However, people of all ages may fall victim to online scams, and we all need to remain vigilant and be careful when we use services online.