Personalised scam text messages and emails, bearing people’s first names, may be the result of victims having clicked on previous scam attempts and having personal information stolen, according to the police.

This is one possible way fraudsters are targeting victims with personalised text messages, Police Inspector Timothy Zammit, from the Cyber Crime Unit, said.

According to Zammit, scammers may be then using that stolen data shared by the victim to retarget the “more gullible” victims with personalised scam messages that contain their names.

Another theory is that scammers could have obtained personal data through the dark web from a range of known leaks such as that involving Facebook.

Since April, people have been receiving convincing text messages and emails from banks and post operators (DHL and Maltapost) that con some into entering their financial details online. 

Since then, scammers have also posed as the police or the Inland Revenue Department and, in a recent scam, they also claim to be issuing refunds.

All scams have one thing in common – they ask potential victims to click on a link that directs them to a website that looks legitimate but that is designed to extract personal information.

In some cases, they are asked to give personal data such as credit card details and contact information.

This form of scam is known as phishing or SMSishing, a type of social engineering attack used to steal user data, including login credentials and credit card numbers. 

The number of people reporting being scammed has reached 500. On June 24, the police registered a record number of scamming reports when they received around 40 from scam victims with more than €50,000 taken from their personal accounts by fraudsters.

“Over the past weeks, the number of reports slowed down slightly but this could be the calm before the storm. We are still not out of trouble,” Zammit explained, as he urged people to remain vigilant and not to click on any links provided in text messages or emails.

He said that, over the past months, the police were busy combing through reports and data in an effort to get to the bottom of the spate of scams.

“We are identifying patterns and are committed to get to the bottom of this,” Zammit said.