Fewer Danes Subjected to Phishing Attacks

Better user-behaviour and ongoing initiatives against phishing have resulted in a dramatic decrease in the number of phishing attacks.

Most citizens are familiar with the term phishing that covers the act of scammers trying to trick users into giving out information. On Monday 3 September 2018, the Danish ICT news website Version2 published an article about this phenomenon, describing how criminals are able to create fake login boxes for NemID (the Danish eID solution). However, phishing attacks are decreasing, and fewer citizens are revealing their personal information.

“Phishing is a security issue we’re always working towards putting a stop to. This is why we regularly carry out technical initiatives and activities aimed at the public in order to decrease the risk of phishing. NemID has two million transactions each day and in 2017, 792 phishing attacks were registered. I believe that our efforts have been instrumental in the significant decrease we’re seeing at the moment." 

Adam Lebech, Deputy Director-General, Agency for Digitisation, Ministry of Finance. 

Implementation of DMARC (Domain Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance), increased cooperation with telecom companies, and the introduction of identity checks for NemID are all examples of initiatives that the Agency for Digitisation has carried out in order to better safeguard against phishing.

“Furthermore, we expect that the new NemID code app will increase security and help users withstand phishing attacks. The NemID code app will send a notification with a transaction text showing what the user is trying to log in to, such as borger.dk or their bank.

Adam Lebech, Deputy Director-General of the Agency for Digitisation

The NemID Code app was launched in May 2018 and has been downloaded by more than 780,000 Danes.

Even though technical measures against phishing are being implemented, there are several precautionary prepositions the private citizens can enact to safeguard themselves against fraud. The Agency for Digitisation actively issues information about new threats and scams and each year the agency carries out a campaign aimed at citizens to encourage common sense and safe user-behaviour when navigating online.