Beware of phishing!

The Commission published a notification on the Funding & Tenders Portal to warn beneficiairies of phishing emails

All project coordinators and grant beneficiaries should be aware of fake phishing emails currently circulating. These email seem to come from beneficiaries, requesting payment of the pre-financing or intermediate payments to a bank account that does not belong to the real beneficiary. The email addresses used look very similar to the real ones but fraudsters are at the other end.

Follow these tips to avoid becoming a victim of such fraud:

• Always verify the transmission of bank account data (or changes to such data) of a beneficiary to whom you make payments via a second channel, with a trusted person at the beneficiary, in particular if the information comes via e-mail (that is easy to fake)
• Do not make any financial transaction unless you are certain of the bank account of the recipient
• Do not reply to fraudulent communication and ignore phishing messages
• Do not provide any personal information
• Let your Granting Authority know immediately

Any questions? Do’t hesitate to contact us.