Overview
- Condusef reported that criminal groups stopped relying on cold calls late in 2025 and began sending mass alarming SMS and WhatsApp messages designed to make recipients call or follow links.
- The agency said the main victim profile shifted from older adults to economically active people roughly 30 to 50 years old, who are targeted for their tendency to respond quickly during work days.
- Common pretexts in the messages include fake traffic fines, alleged package problems, warnings of account blocks by UIF or SAT, and bogus passport‑renewal or suspicious‑charge notices.
- When victims respond by calling, callers face telephone social engineering that tries to extract account details; when they click links, they are sent to sophisticated phishing pages that ask for card numbers, passwords and dynamic codes.
- Condusef documented higher complaint volumes in early 2026, reported more than 35,000 fraud claims between January and May in related reporting, and urges people to ignore links, never share passwords or tokens, and verify issues only through official apps or authenticated customer‑service numbers.