Texts that look like they come from INPS, your bank or the Post Office: spotting them in ten seconds

A message arrives. It says your INPS profile needs updating, that someone has entered your account, that a parcel is being held. There is a link. Everything looks right — even the sender, which lines up on your phone underneath the genuine messages.

This kind of fraud is called smishing (fraud by text message), and whoever runs it relies on two things: haste and fear. It works best on people who already have reason to fear a letter from the authorities.

The rules below come from the Polizia Postale, Italy's cyber police. There are few of them and they never change.

Rule one: INPS text messages never contain links

It is the Polizia Postale's exact wording, and on its own it settles most cases: text messages sent by INPS do not contain links. You reach the institute's services only through the official site, typing the address yourself: www.inps.it.

So: an INPS text with a link in it is a scam. There is no need to read the rest of the message.

In the campaign reported by the police, the fake site was a copy of the INPS one, and asked for personal details, an IBAN, an identity document and even a selfie. With that material, accounts are opened and loans requested in someone else's name.

Rule two: no bank asks for data by text, email or phone

Again the Polizia Postale's words: no credit institution asks, by text, email or telephone, for personal or banking data to be entered or communicated.

Not passwords, not the codes that arrive by text, not your card number. Ever. If someone asks you for them, whoever they say they are, you already have your answer.

Rule three: «move your money to a safe account» is always a scam

This deserves a line of its own, because it is the fraud that empties accounts completely.

Someone calls saying they are from the bank, the Post Office or the police: your account is under attack, they say, and you must move the money to a safe account. The Polizia Postale is categorical: no postal or banking operator, and no police officer, will ever ask you to move money to other accounts.

That «safe» account is theirs.

The number that looks like the real one

There is a technique called spoofing that defeats the most natural check: the caller makes your phone display the genuine number of your bank or of the police. Your phone shows it as authentic, because it only sees what it is told.

So the number on screen proves nothing. If a call asks you for data or for moving money, hang up and call back yourself, dialling the number on your card or on the bank's official site. If it really was the bank, they will not take offence.

How to look at a link, when you must

Before opening anything, the Polizia Postale suggests comparing the address offered with the genuine one. Fakes look very close: one letter changes, a hyphen is added, the domain ends oddly.

The practical rule that never fails: never go in through a link you received. Open the browser and type the address yourself, or use the official app. It costs ten seconds and removes the problem at the root.

It applies to WhatsApp too

The same messages arrive on WhatsApp, and there is a variant there that hits people with family far away hardest: «Hi mum, this is my new number», followed shortly by an urgent request for money.

There is only one check, and it cannot be faked: call the old number, the one in your contacts. If your son really has changed number, he will still answer a voice message or call you back. A fraudster will not.

If you have already clicked

It happens, and it happens to anyone: it happens on the days when you really are waiting for an answer from INPS or the bank. In order:

1. Call your bank or the post office where you hold the account straight away and have the card and access blocked. The sooner you call, the more can be stopped.
2. Change the password for that service, and anywhere else you used the same one.
3. Stop replying to that number and do not call it back.
4. Report it at commissariatodips.it, the online police station.
5. If it is urgent, call 113 or the single emergency number 112.

And the thing that matters most: do not be ashamed. These frauds are built by professionals to work on careful people. Silence is the only thing that genuinely helps them.

Why this audience is a double target

People whose first language is not Italian find it harder to catch the mistake in a message, and people with an open case at a public office have one more reason to believe the message is genuine.

So it is worth keeping a single idea in mind: Italian institutions do not ask for anything by text message. If you need something from INPS, the Questura or the town hall, you are the one who goes to them — not the other way round.

Got a suspicious message and cannot tell whether it is genuine? Post it in the Money and bills section of the community — with your own details removed — and we will look at it together. If it is a new scam, knowing about it helps everyone.