Phishing: Alleged reimbursement of costs by Deutsche Bahn lures victims

The phishing radar of the consumer advice centers warns of a current phishing scam in which fraudsters are looking for victims with supposed cost reimbursements from Deutsche Bahn. As Deutsche Bahn is struggling with massive problems, the scam is highly likely to be effective.

The phishing email has the subject line "Your online request has been successfully processed", the authors write in the Phishing Radar. It purports to be a notification of a refund for a train ticket.

Indications of an attempted scam

The salutation of the email is impersonal, which is a first indication of a fraud attempt. The sender's address is also dubious. The information that the refund request for a train ticket has been successfully processed is followed by information on the refund amount, a ticket number and the date of travel. The request has of course not been made, but anyone who has actually submitted a request should check the data such as ticket number and date of travel carefully.

The rest of the email text merely adds that the amount was supposedly transferred to a specified payment method and that the message should be retained. There is no request for action. However, there is a red button underneath with the words "My request has been activated", which apparently leads to a phishing page. Recipients of such emails should delete them or move them to the SPAM folder and not follow the link they contain.

Timetable lottery

The scam could be successful, as Deutsche Bahn is experiencing massive problems due to its ailing rail network. As the Tagesschau reports, citing the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the timetable has already had to be changed between two and three million times this year. The planning of train journeys is increasingly becoming a lottery. A member of the DB Supervisory Board is quoted as saying: "Timetables are no longer calculated, but only estimated". As a result, more than a third of all trains are unpunctual. As a result, many people are currently likely to submit refund applications to Deutsche Bahn.

Fraudsters are always coming up with new scams to take money out of victims' pockets. At the beginning of the month, for example, the LKA Lower Saxony issued a warning about letters containing a QR code encoding a URL that leads to phishing sites.

(dmk)