Watch out: .be-sites being misused for phishing

Cybercriminals are increasingly using .be websites to catch out unsuspecting Belgians through phishing. This report comes from the Centre for Cybersecurity Belgium (CCB) and is based on the fake e-mails received via suspect@safeonweb.be. In 2018, 42 suspicious websites using a Belgian domain name have already been reported.

According to the CCB, cybercrims deliberately buy domains for a particular region so that they can persuade people more easily to click through on these types of links. The rationale behind this is that Belgians are likely to be less mistrustful of a .be link than they would be of an unknown domain.

Don’t click on it – send it to CCB

The golden rule remains: always take a critical look at any e-mails and WhatsApp or Facebook messages that ask you to click on a link or open an attachment – even if the sender looks bona fide at first glance.

If you receive a suspicious e-mail, send it through to suspect@safeonweb.be and mark it as spam before deleting it. Based on the suspicious basis e-mails forwarded to CCB, more than 1000 phishing websites have already been blocked in the leading web browsers.

Want to find out how to unmask a phishing e-mail? Click on the link below.