TSE warns about voter registration scam “cancelled” received by message
On Wednesday (21), the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) released an important warning: criminals are applying scams on behalf of the body in order to obtain voter data. According to the TSE, fraud arrives by email or messaging apps and tries to deceive people by saying that their voter titles have been provisionally cancelled.
TSE says messages are malicious and aim to capture sensitive data to apply scams. (Image: Gilles Lambert/Unsplash)
The Court explains that the scam works like this: the potential victim receives a message that his title was temporarily cancelled. At the end of the text, there is a link that takes you to a page where you are supposed to be able to regularize your electoral situation.
This regularization, however, is only done when people inform your personal data, such as the CPF, for example. The Superior Electoral Court is emphatic: “All these messages are malicious and aim to capture information to apply scams.”
It is important to emphasize that the Electoral Court never communicates the cancellation of voter registration or any registration irregularity through e-mail messages or applications such as WhatsApp or Telegram. Furthermore, no personal data is requested by these means.
Those who need information about their electoral registration, should check them on their own on the portal or in the official application of the TSE. Only in cases of legal proceedings and the summons of mesários, the agency can contact by email or messaging apps.
Finally, the Court stresses the importance of verifying whether the websites or applications accessed belong even to the official bodies. To do this, just note if they contain the “.jus.br” ending at the address.
Experts also warn of risks
Also in the statement, the TSE reported that scams like this are not new and said it is sought “often”.
For Daniel Barbosa, information security expert at ESET, dates such as elections are extensively used by criminals. He says that because people’s attention is focused on (this event), scammers try to attract victims to get sensitive data.
The goal of criminals is to profit from this information or use it for other frauds. A common feature of these scams, according to Barbosa, is precisely the receipt of links that redirect the victim to external sites.
The expert warns that in this case the ideal is always to suspect, search for information from official sources and never report sensitive data to unknown contacts or malicious websites.
