Associations such as Deco continue to receive several contacts from victims, despite the alerts and awareness campaigns, at a time when electronic fraud is increasing and becoming more difficult to detect.

"Electronic communications operators have been monitoring this phenomenon with natural concern, working permanently to preserve the integrity and security of their networks, as well as the communications of their customers," said the secretary-general of the Association of Electronic Communications Operators (Apritel), Pedro Mota Soares, in response to Lusa.

In the SMS, which are often sent through numbers starting with 92 and written in Brazilian Portuguese, the alleged authors identify themselves as members of the human resources team of companies such as TikTok and invite the recipients to apply for 'online' job vacancies, being sent 'links' of supposed WhatsApp groups for this purpose.

"Hello, I'm from TikTok's human resources team and I'm writing to you. We urgently need 100 employees to work 'online', with daily salaries from 50 to 800 euros. You can participate in your free time. If you are interested, you can contact us by WhatsApp [...]. If you send us a message now, you will receive a bonus of 5 euros", reads one of these messages.

The issue is a computer fraud, called 'smishing', which consists of using SMS to extract confidential information, such as bank details.

Contacts can also arrive directly via WhatsApp, through foreign numbers, with messages written in Portuguese or English.

In these cases, it is common for the authors to claim to have received an application, from the recipients of the messages, for a certain position, then asking for personal data.

To monitor this problem, the operators have teams working 24 hours a day, "cooperating with the competent authorities taking into account the legal and regulatory framework in force".

Pedro Mota Soares also guaranteed that the operators "take seriously" the awareness of good practices against this type of message, "which is why they do it actively by themselves and in collaboration with all the entities that are dedicated to promoting the safe use of electronic communications".

As explained by the Deco Proteste specialist in the technology area António Alves, this type of fraud always starts with the sending of a message with an attractive job proposal.

"If the person takes the bait, what they do is send a 'link', which keeps changing and leads to a fabricated page, a 'dashboard' [visual panel] that has a list of tasks, with social media logos. The person can register and, from then on, they are assigned tasks, which can be commenting on videos and following some people", he detailed to Lusa.

As the tasks are completed, a "hypothetical balance" appears, which can only be withdrawn, as a general rule, after two weeks of work.

At that time, the authors of the fraud ask for a small amount to be transferred to a certain account to validate the IBAN or for the payment of some fee and, later, it is suggested that the transactions be made in cryptocurrencies, preventing any trace from being left.

"They will start telling people that they have to transfer, for example, 100 cryptocurrencies and they will do this up to the limit that they can extract from the person", warned António Alves.

When people find out or suspect that they are involved in a fraud, they are blocked, the 'links' are no longer operational and they lose contact with the authors.

Subsequently, new links and pages are created to try to catch other people in the scheme.

According to Deco, an association for the defense of the Consumer, when people fall for this type of fraud it is "very difficult to recover the transferred amounts".

However, the case should be reported to the authorities, such as the Judicial Police and the Cybercrime Office of the Public Prosecutor's Office, as well as the electronic complaint system and the banks, when applicable.

"In general, we are talking about situations that are difficult to resolve because even by filing a complaint, what will be realized is that it is difficult to identify the author of the fraud, who is behind that scheme. They use all sorts of ways to hide their identity. Now they should always do it. Not all cases are lost. The fact that the complaint is made means that the fraud will stop having an effect more quickly", concluded António Alves.

According to data provided by Kaspersky, a global cybersecurity company, in 2023, 700 million 'phishing' attacks (a general term to describe electronic fraud) were recorded worldwide.

In Portugal, as the company pointed out, bank and service customers are the main targets of these attacks.

In addition to job offers, it is common for these scams to use promotions or false messages from financial institutions.

Kaspersky recommends paying attention to the sender of the message, to exaggerated promises, as well as to unsolicited messages with links to enter personal data.

At the same time, users can access 'online' tools that allow them to confirm whether the 'links' they want to access are reliable.

Lusa contacted Meta, owner of WhatsApp and Facebook, and TikTok, but received no response.

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