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Euro cops take down cybercrime network with 49M fake accounts
- padjo 11mo ago“Euro Cop” sounds like Jean-Claude Van Damme movie.
- petre 11mo agoExcept Van Damme is no cop. https://www.euronews.com/culture/2025/04/03/jean-claude-van-damme-accused-of-having-sex-with-victims-of-sex-trafficking https://www.euronews.com/culture/2025/04/03/jean-claude-van-...
- devjab 11mo agoI don't think this comment will contribute much, so please forgive that, but calling a "Collaboration between Europol and the Shadowserver Foundation" for "Euro cops" is probably the most Australian thing I've ever seen on the entire internet. https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/cybercrime-service-takedown-7-arrested https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/cybe...
- isoprophlex 11mo agoIn my mind "euro cops" holds overtones of some a late-90s track-suit-and-nike shoes, bald shaven gabber rave robocop-from-amsterdam pastiche
- ahartmetz 11mo agoI mean your version is much more entertaining, but there was a TV series (1988-1992) that was actually called Eurocops. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094456/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094456/
- mrtksn 11mo agoI enjoyed the title more that I want to admit TBH :) In every country in Europe people are pissed with their government and hate the police but when its a "Euro" thing it feels much better. The online narrative may make you think that "Europe" is a dirty word(chat control, cookie banner, regulations, fines etc), but its actually much more pure than any local politics and much much less divisive. The "Euro cops" phrase gives me the feeling of bunch of police officers that are not particularly fun at parties but are definitely not corrupt.
- anonzzzies 11mo ago> In every country in Europe people are pissed with their government and hate the police those exist, never met any luckily, guess I hang in positive circles.
- constantius 11mo agoThe EU has its advantages, but I'd never list "more pure" and "not corrupt" among them. The EU introduced lobbying (=legal corruption) into European politics when most countries historically didn't have much of it. It also has a massive amount of normal, God-fearing illegal corruption. Many of the biggest stories about the EU are about or have a sizable aspect of corruption. Chat Control amd Thorn, Ursula von der Leyen and Big Pharma, Ursula von der Leyen and $anything. Follow the Money is a thriving investigative journalism publication that lives off uncovering corruption in the EU. https://netzpolitik.org/2022/dude-wheres-my-privacy-how-a-hollywood-star-lobbies-the-eu-for-more-surveillance/ https://netzpolitik.org/2022/dude-wheres-my-privacy-how-a-ho... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizergate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizergate https://www.ftm.eu/ https://www.ftm.eu/
- mrtksn 11mo agoOn the contrary, EU is notoriously hard for the rich to lobby. It is also the primary motivation behind the super rich to be against EU since they too are having trouble to find someone in EU to solve their "problems". A famous anecdote is from Rupert Murdock who is able to influence UK poltics at whim but had no effect on EU: https://www.quora.com/When-I-go-into-Downing-Street-they-do-what-I-say-when-I-go-to-Brussels-they-take-no-notice-Rupert-Murdoch-Given-this-should-everyone-ignore-any-political-statements-about-Brexit-and-the-EU-made-by-his-newspapers https://www.quora.com/When-I-go-into-Downing-Street-they-do-... He was also a huge backer of Brexit. On social media there's persistent and years long push to paint EU as anti-Business. They are pushing and pushing for de-regulations. The Pfizergate is another great example of what happens when you have a centralized decision. That scandal only exist because of the Covid, an unprecedented situation where EU has to take quick actions and had to engage with companies directly. The scope of the scandal is also extremely benign compared to what you have in other places, it's essentially a transparency scandal. No one is even seriously accusing her of abuse of her position for personal enrichment when in a normal country this type of scandal is often about giving the contract to a relative of theirs or an election campaign donor. Once the Ukraine war is over, I also expect to see other scandals to be unearthed as they were rushed to acquire weapons fast. There are scandals like Qatar paying an MPs to push their agenda, but other than that EU is so much less corrupt than anything the local governments have. Those involved in the Qatar scandal went to prison, how many local politicians you have who go to prison for anything other than political reasons? Have you noticed what has been happening in US since February for example? That one is extreme but all over EU the local governments have some sort of these scams and dealings. In countries like US all you have to do is to buy president's crypto coins or make a donation for his election campaigns. In EU, you simply can't do anything of this sort. That's why those who want influence actually pay social media influencers to push an agenda and this is considerably more expensive and hard compared to just establishing a relationship and paying up the president. Many of EU's weaknesses are also it's strength since having full control and being able to move fast comes with its risks. That's why across the EU the trust in EU and support for EU is way higher than any local governments. The worst is over %50 in favor of EU, when most of the governments consider themselves lucky if they are in the %30s.
- username135 11mo agoGlad I'm not the only one. Euro Cops!
- hofrogs 11mo agoThese burner phone numbers not exclusively used by criminals, a privacy-minded person would use those to make accounts on services that require a phone number (and sadly, it feels like there's a lot of these lately)
- dewey 11mo agoIf you look at these companies it's never aimed at the privacy enthusiast use case. They are aiming for mass-sms outreach, anti-bot measures and sell them in bundles of 1000s.
- immibis 11mo agoMass SMS is illegal on the part of the sender, not any intermediary services. Anti-anti-bot is a good thing since anti-bot is destroying the internet.
- codedokode 11mo agoInstead of requiring a phone number, accept a small amount ($1-2) in cryptocurrency. You can charge extra if the user sends too many DMs or gives too many likes. Perfect solution against spammers. However, personal information costs much more than $2, so the companies will continue to demand a phone number. Mobile OS developers even developed a format for automatically transferring SMS OTP to a website to help scammy companies.
- dewey 11mo agoRequiring a user to use cryptocurrency sounds like a great way to not have a lot of users.
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- danjermaus 11mo agoI misinterpreted the title and thought the cops used 49M fake accounts to take down the network
- plank 11mo agoYep, I did as well. And visited the site to see how cops used fake accounts... So... Clickbait title? ;-)
- cout 11mo agoIs 49M a lot?
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- huflungdung 11mo ago[dead]
- KronisLV 11mo ago> The coordinated takedown, codenamed Operation SIMCARTEL, took place on October 10 in Latvia, as part of a joint investigation by police in the Baltic nation, Austria, Estonia and Finland. Not the best way to see my country in the news, but oh well. That said, I wish I could reasonably do something similar to what's possible with e-mails: where you can have one mailbox per account/company you want to do interaction with, like aliexpress@mydomain.com, paypal@mydomain.com, banking@mydomain.com and so on. I'd like to have one phone number per company or whatever that I have to interact with, so that if they sell my data to third parties and I suddenly start getting advertisement/spam calls, I can figure out exactly who was acting badly.
- makeitdouble 11mo agoHonest question, how well does it go for for email ? I did that pretty seriously for a while, and in my case I feel it led to nothing specific. I'd get spam from weird places and shut the address, but that would actually amount to an extremely small amount of the total spam I was getting. Also my ISP or the phone company was selling away my email and there was no way I'd just block them, nor would they give a shit about my bitching to their customer support.
- dewey 11mo agoYea, same feeling here. I did that for a while but in the end I maybe went ahead and blocked one address in over 10 years of doing that. It was more of a hassle than it was worth, especially if you want to do password resets and you have to dig up that email again vs. just typing your default one.
- jcynix 11mo agoWhat hassle? With a bit of organization there's no real hassle. My addresses are all in /etc/aliases on the mail server and have a time stamped comment in front of them naming the company / website. I can easily take this "db" with me on my smartphone. Or could make it available with a simple interface. As we use Joplin already to share data between family members, that's the place the list of addresses lives for lookups from family members. The benefit isn't primarily for deletion, which is a nice side effect, but to easily recognize phishing to the "wrong" email addresses. Certain deletions are done automatically for addresses where I put a timestamp in, e.g. me.dhl24c@example.com will be from the third quarter of 2024 and can be removed at the end of 2024.
- 1oooqooq 11mo agowhy are taxes being used to moderate Facebook?
- AmbroseBierce 11mo agoIf someone robs a costumer inside a McDonald's do you complain when the cops that arrive and capture the thieves are paid with taxes and not by McDonald's itself?
- thomassmith65 11mo agoIf you can't afford to buy a costume, just wear your nicest regular outfit. Fancy dress is not worth jail time.
- lisbbb 11mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- koliber 11mo agoWhen your mom or grandma gets swindled out of her retirement, this will start making sense.
- sfdlkj3jk342a 11mo agoThe only real solution to these problems is to convert the accounts of the elderly or anyone who can't be trusted to spot scammers into joint accounts with restrictions on large transactions controlled by a trusted family member or nominee.
- codedokode 11mo agoOther solution would be to restrict international calls though.
- sva_ 11mo ago> In the raid, authorities seized 1200 SIM boxes, with the devices containing 40,000 active SIM cards Realistically, wouldn't that look suspicious to a cell tower if 40k sims log in from one location?
- doublerabbit 11mo agoConsidering how enriched we are with mobile devices you'd probably already have hundred of thousands logging in from one location.
- lillecarl 11mo agoNo, the denser the area the more radio towers there are making precision better.
- Nextgrid 11mo agoIf they mostly received inbound traffic, the carrier actually gets paid for it, so may not have any incentive to stop this. Carriers generally only care when SIM farms place outgoing traffic (it allows them to use cheap/free consumer plans instead of expensive SMS providers).
- rmbyrro 11mo agoCan they know the SIM location precisely? I believe they can only triangulate multiple towers to determine a radius. If they could pinpoint a specific, narrow location, it'd be easier to spot unusual concentration.
- Lapsa 11mo agothey can know your inner monologue, thoughts precisely
- lillecarl 11mo agoIt's not impossible that they have directional antennas pointed at different towers nearby-ish, if you do directional antennas the triangulation thing kinda fails. Just speculation though, it's more likely they just paid the right people off.
- immibis 11mo agoThis is a legitimate service also used by privacy minded individuals - just like the recent similar raid in the USA. What's the actual crime here?
- whynotmaybe 11mo agoPer another article : Europol und Eurojust, were able to attribute to the criminal network more than 1 700 individual cyber fraud cases in Austria and 1 500 in Latvia, with a total loss of several million euros. The financial loss in Austria alone amounts to around EUR 4.5 million, as well as EUR 420 000 in Latvia. So I guess they were providing legitimate business while doing scams at the same time.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 11mo agoNetwork operators have a right to know who is using their pipes.
- yupyupyups 11mo agoThis is not about individual network operators making the choice by themselves, rather they are many times compelled to do so by law. This is partucularly problematic when it comes to mobile services as they allow people to be tracked.
- immibis 11mo agoAFAIK network operators are no longer required to know their customer, but may still choose to do so. They're required to cooperate with law enforcement investigations. This doesn't seem like "cooperation" in this case, but rather "police just barge in and take all your stuff" and they probably could win a civil case against the police to get their equipment back or its monetary value, as well as lost revenue. Europe generally has higher rule of law than USA, so there's less chance a judge could say "your business sounds shady so you don't win this case." The recent EU-wide Digital Services Act has generous liability protections for "mere conduits". A mere conduit is anyone who is just getting traffic from A to B, unless they are A or B themselves. Even though in this case their cellphone operator may think they are originators of traffic, if they are a relay business (and not spammers themselves) then they are mere conduits and protected from liability*. Of course they must still cooperate with law enforcement to track down the source of the spam, but they are not required to pre-emptively KYC. Having their office raided and all their equipment stolen doesn't sound like "cooperating" to me. * their cellphone company probably has the right to terminate these SIM contracts, and may also sue for damages, but I suspect the damages would be something like the difference between their actual cost of SIM cards and the EU-prescribed maximum wholesale rate for sending texts, which is likely a negative number.
- munchlax 11mo agoIf websites didn't force insecure SMS 2FA, these services wouldn't be neccesary. It's like we can't have nice things anymore because criminals can't have nice things so you can't have them either. Try entering a landline whenever you're asked a phone number for your account. They say the number is invalid, which I find insulting because I know my number very well and it's been around for longer than those websites. And now this article insults me again by saying it's only used for criminal activities. The gall.
- reconnecting 11mo agoI wish one day INTERPOL would share a list of those fake accounts instead of vehicle photos.
- lisbbb 11mo agoDead Internet Theory
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- nora-puchreiner 11mo agoThere are much more tech photos in local news media: https://rus.delfi.lv/57863/criminal/120091647/foto-video-v-hode-mezhdunarodnoy-operacii-zaderzhany-grazhdane-latvii-operatory-moshennicheskih-shem#gallery-id=4d2bd727-f568-4ab3-b854-d43631992397&image-id=3261392f-f2fc-430f-a8b2-79936dbf1f3e https://rus.delfi.lv/57863/criminal/120091647/foto-video-v-h...
- codedokode 11mo agoThe reason why SIM boxes exist, is because in many countries you cannot buy a SIM card anonymously, and because every site now wants your phone number.
- devJdeed 11mo agoI wonder what people used to do with these fake 41M accounts. I suspect alot for influencing conversations online.
- rurban 11mo agoThat's probably the cause why I cannot get an Australian phone number nor data plan for my month long business visit here. 3 different prepaid SIM's cannot get registered with my foreign Austrian passport. Roaming is way too expensive here. Telstra support tells me to call their free support number, nice catch 22. I cannot use my phone, only hotel, company or free wifi. There is no free wifi, because hackers. Telstra website sends my password to my new phone number via SMS, which is not yet activated. Catch 22. Or they just claim unknown error. I've tried all providers. Telstra customer service gives me a date for a personal visit (so I can actually get my password to finish registration), but then at the date there is no appointment alotted. I got another date, but then my month long visit will be already over. Every 14 year old Asian kid tries to hack into everything here. If access cards, wifi or web pages. It's the wild east here.
- moscoe 11mo agoInternational police appear to be targeting these massive sim-dependent fraud/scam operations. Probably not difficult to track these hot spots.