The Arroba team from Lanzarote of the Civil Guard has investigated a resident of Arrecife and clarified two crimes of fraud, one crime of impersonation of civil status and another of document forgery.
The investigation began after two complaints filed with the Civil Guard of Lanzarote through the Main Post of Yaiza in March 2023. Specifically, several people reported that they had detected that amounts had been charged to their bank accounts for consumer credit from a well-known credit institution.
After that, the members of the Arroba Team of Lanzarote, within the tasks entrusted to them in the exercise of their specific functions in the fight against Cybercrime, collected all the data on the events that occurred and carried out the appropriate police investigations. The agents of the Benemérita detected how the injured parties, days before the reported events, had been in contact through a social network with a person for the alleged rental of a property.
As a result of that negotiation, the perpetrator managed to seize the personal documentation of these people, later using it for the formalization of, at least, two bank loans.
In this type of attack, cybercriminals use social engineering techniques to gain the trust of their victims and thus obtain the personal information they need for the subsequent perpetration of scams and frauds. Security measures to protect your documents and avoid impersonation of civil status.
Precautions to take into account if you are going to send documentation and personal data over the Internet
The National Institute of Cybersecurity (INCIBE) provides these recommendations in case you need to share personal documents, there are measures you can take to ensure that you send them in the safest way possible:
- Verify the identity of the recipient: Before sending any sensitive documentation, make sure that you know and trust the person or entity that will receive the information, that is, check the authenticity of the recipient before sending them the documents and avoid sharing documents with unknown people or on non-secure websites.
- Use secure shipping methods: Use file sharing platforms that offer additional security measures, such as protecting a document with a password. In this way, only the recipient with the password will be able to access the content.
- Limit the information shared: Always evaluate whether it is necessary to send all the details of a document or if you can reduce the amount of information you share. The less confidential information you provide, the lower the risk in the event of a security breach.
- Use cloud services that encrypt the documentation by default.
Many already offer vaults or specific sections to protect this type of information with an additional security layer. Example: OneDrive personal vault. • Remind the recipient that once it is no longer necessary for them to have this information, delete it from their devices or systems.
