The call center of the Electronic Crime Prosecution received in 2023, on the five-digit line that operates on a 24-hour basis free of charge, 11188, approximately five thousand completed and attempted complaints of fraud through mobile phones and the Internet.
In total, according to what he mentioned in the First Program, 91.6 and 105.8 o Vassilis PapakostasDirector of the Electronic Crime Prosecution of the Hellenic Police, the 11188, received approx 100,000 calls, as although the call center was established essentially to complain purely cybercrimescitizens call many times because they also face various issues of a technical nature, wherever the service in question tries to respond.
“However, these 5,000 were not complaints from citizens who were deceived or who tried to deceive, they were even at an informational level so that other citizens would not be deceived,” noted Mr. Papakostas.
Fraud is the dominant crime worldwide, he pointed out, as he said “if we consider that about 5.5 billion citizens, the 66-68% of the population globally it’s internet users, it’s a field for cybercriminals to approach in these ways and cheat, make money.”
“If we consider that all blogs worldwide are more than 1.3 billion, it is a number that is incredibly large and may help in the future the artificial intelligence that is being developed, which can more quickly and easily detect processes and blogs which they are trying to defraud” added Mr. Papakostas, noting however that there is also the other side of the coin, in the sense that with the help of AI the frauds will become more and more convincing.
“Fraudsters try to reach out to people in any number of ways, whether it’s pretending that a message they’re sending is from a bank, or a company that can help them fix a problem with their computer, or that they’re their accountant and will help them get a pass given by the government. More generally, they try to approach in any way.
They fool you any way, as long as they approach you and at some point they start extracting money. What we can tell the citizens is that anything unusual, think that even if there was a relative and there was an inheritance, they wouldn’t find us through Facebook. There are other ways, there are other offices and legal procedures that do all this. Also, our bank will never ask us to verify details online. The banks themselves say so in their announcements. All that glitters is not gold, no one offers, especially over the internet.
Suddenly we see some offers, we see a mobile phone that costs 1,500 euros and suddenly we see it at 300, at 400. No one gives things away on the internet. We must be suspicious of any offer or approach that is made, and what they propose to us is clearly not true,” said Mr. Papakostas characteristically.
