Reporting cybercrime in Austria
- Graham Crewe
- Apr 5, 2023
- 1 min read
Updated: Apr 6, 2023
We've all been victims of cybercrime in some shape or form such as phishing (Wikipedia), identity theft, online fraud and harassment. But what can be done about it here in Austria?
Perhaps like me you have thought about going to the police, but then decided that they wouldn't have the interest, time or resources to investigate.
Well all the answers are online, obviously! All the links below are in German but Chrome, Edge, Safari and Firefox will translate everything for you.
Online resources
The Austrian government has developed a number of resources. The main starting point is here: https://www.onlinesicherheit.gv.at/public.html. Click on the Meldestellen link to file a report. There are a number of options depending on the type of crime from fraud to misuse of your image online to child sex tourism.
There is a cybercrime office called the Cybercrime-Competence-Center (C4) at the BMI (Bundesministerium Inneres). You can find them online here including an email address for reporting crime: https://bundeskriminalamt.at/306/start.aspx
Please take the time to report cybercrime. Only by doing this is there any hope of fighting the problem.
This link is aslo quite useful for the Austrian Internet Ombudsman - https://www.ombudsstelle.at/
My wife and I have both reported those „hallo papa“ SMSs to the cybercrime police today. They replied telling us that it’s not cybercrime. Disappointing that they couldn’t forward it on to whoever is dealing with that. If anyone is. Millions of messages have been sent and I know someone who paid €4000 thinking her son had been an idiot again.
For that scam I can’t see why the mobile operators can’t use AI or machine learning to simply block those texts from arriving on our phones.
As an aside, here are all the National links identified by Europol. https://www.europol.europa.eu/report-a-crime/report-cybercrime-online For the UK, I always send phishing emails to NCSC - https://www.gov.uk/report-suspicious-emails-websites-phishing