The fake links are often embedded in seemingly innocent offers of discounts by posing as public authorities, retailers, or shipping suppliers. Mobile operator Tele2, along with its Swedish counterparts, has introduced a security solution that calls for greater public engagement. If you receive suspicious text messages, not only do you not open the links, but also forward the whole message to the free number 1677.
"As of today, our customers can send such text messages to the free number 1677. On the other side, the system, artificial intelligence will analyze these text messages and block both the contents of the text message, if it's fraudulent, and also this message sender," Oskars Fīrmanis. head of public relations at Tele2, told LTV.
The “Bite” operator also has a security system. It analyzes numbers from which too many calls are made in a short time, as well as too many text messages sent. These numbers may be temporarily blocked by the system.
"We work very closely with CERT, exchanging numbers and the malicious sites we detect. Then CERT on its side evaluates and blocks them all over Latvia. And customers are protected regardless of the operator," explained Una Ahuna-Ozola, corporate and public relations manager at Bite.
Mobile operators point out that this is how they prevent several million cyber attacks every month. The number of attacks tends to increase.