"Phishing" is an attempt made by persons with fraudulent intent to access confidential data (e.g. login data for e-mail accounts and social networking sites or bank card and credit card data) via the Internet.
E-mails with bogus senders request, for example, that you reply with your account information via e-mail, or enter it at a website via a link in an e-mail. The link will take you to websites with addresses and content that look deceptively similar to the login pages of Swisscom, Facebook, webmail services, banks and other online services. If you enter your account information on the fake website, the fraudsters will store this information and use it to send e-mails, or even to purchase goods, via your account.
How to protect yourself against phishing
Like Swisscom, Swiss Post, banks, credit card companies, etc. will never ask you for your passwords, credit card numbers or other personal information via e-mail or over the telephone.
A sender's e-mail address can be forged easily. Therefore, an e-mail is not necessarily from the service provider (e.g. Swisscom, bank, eBay, etc.) shown as the sender, even though it may appear to be. For this reason, it is important to check the plausibility of the message. Never click on the links displayed in dubious e-mails in order to reach a login page.
**Technical filters do not offer 100% protection
**Swisscom now relies on technical aids to combat phishing, so-called phishing filters. These recognise phishing attempts among a large number of e-mails. However, the fraudsters have perfected their e-mails in recent years by making them extremely similar to reputable company e-mails in terms of both graphics and content. Our current filters have been adapted to be adequately sensitive in order to challenge this development. Unfortunately, in some cases this can lead to classifying certain e-mails as phishing, although they come from trustworthy senders.
There is no such thing as 100% protection from phishing. Nevertheless, Swisscom is dedicating itself to this topic intensively to ensure that our customers continue to enjoy the highest possible protection in the future. In a next step, the e-mails recognised by our filters as phishing are forwarded to our customers with a note to that effect. After all, as a customer you are in the best position to decide whether the e-mail in question is a newsletter you have subscribed to or a fraudulent attempt at phishing. In the latter case, we recommend that you delete the e-mail permanently (from the recycle bin as well).
Swisscom is working constantly to improve its security systems. However, the communication of security-related work does not take place publicly, as this would play into the hands of the fraudsters. In any case, we endeavour to inform our customers about changes in good time.