Just an Anti-Phishing rant

Hey world! It's been a minute...

Today I received a couple phishing e-mails, like the one in the screenshot below (not that this is a first) and I decided to do something about it.

 

So.. I tried to find the report button on my email account. I couldn't! I could only mark the email as spam, but I could not report it.

Then I tried to inform the relevant bank and I was surprised to realize that the don't have a system for that... They only provide self-protection instructions.

So, I decided to escalate this... As the sender's domain was from inside EU (one of them was Germany actually) I decided to go and report it to the appropriate German authority.  I ended up in the Cybercrime page of BNK which also seems to only provide information and not have a report form (or email)...

To be honest, I found this sketchy site which seems to ask you to report spam email from Germany to them, but at best FSM seems as a volunteer organization and at worse it's a fraud itself.

Going forward, I check the EU aspect of this, but my search drove me to OLAF which is something like EU's internal affairs.... anyway, they ask you to visit Europol's site on the mater (also the bank had this link as well). 

So.. I went there.

Guess what!! Europol just instructs you to contact your local authorities!!!

And we already know by now what is going on in Germany, is there any chance it's better in Greece ??

Well.. you guessed that right: Of course there is no way other than actually calling the police. And of course I will not spend the phone operator's and the duty officers' valuable time for a phishing email of which I'm not a victim... There should be a separate second line service for that... 

In the end I quit, I just reported the domains to Google and Microsoft, to make sure the domain's existence will be blocked from practically any browser but that's not the way. It is not the responsibility of corporations to protect the public... It's the responsibility of the states.

Why is it so difficult for EU to have a centralized service to protect the public proactively by shutting down those sites? Or at least for each country to have one ? 

Just by searching "Report Phishing" in Google I can easily find:

1) USA's CISA

2) Google's safebrowsing page 

3) UK's report-a-scam NCSC

4) Microoft's  support page

So, it seems to be easy for US (a big federal country - comparable to what EU wants to be) and UK (a medium sized country, not bigger or richer than Germany).

Pretty sure that if I managed to search in different languages I would find options to report spam in countries even smaller than Greece actually.... But why is it so difficult for EU countries ?

#phishing, #report, #EU, #Greece,  #Germany

Turkish Provocations Once Again.

Once again, Turkey is showing it's real will by invading Greek Territorial Waters.

Yesterday, November 15th, was the black anniversary from the unilateral declaration of independence of the illegal state of Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, in the Occupied lands of Cyprus Republic! There was even a peaceful protest of the UK Cyprus Students Union METOPO, in London.

And yet, they chose this particular day, to provoke once again. Early yesterday, the ship Malene Ostervold, of Turkish Interest and under Norway Flag, entered the Greek Territorial Waters, in the area of Kastelorizo, a Greek island in the Aegean Sea, escorted by the Turkish frigate Gediz. The Greek patrol ship, a gunboat called Polemistis (Warrior), informed the captain of the ship for the Illegal action, and in the meanwhile the Greek Secretary of State informed the Norwegian Government about the incident.

The ship was instructed by both the Gunboat Polemistis and the Government of Norway to leave the area, though it has not yet moved, claiming a mechanical failure, whilst the Turkish Frigate is acting offensive manoeuvres against the Greek patrol Gunboat. Now, after more than 30 hours the incident has not been cleared yet.

So, that's the country we want in the European Union?