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VIENNA

City of Vienna warns public over ‘residence letter’ scam

People who live in Vienna have started receiving letters asking them to register their "residence data" online. Here's what you need to know about the new scam.

Published: 7 February 2024 16:07 CET
City of Vienna warns public over 'residence letter' scam
Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

The Stadt Wien administration has warned residents of the Austrian capital about a new (and very deceptive) scam targeting the people in the city. 

“Some Viennese households are currently receiving deceptively genuine-looking letters asking them to enter personal data on a website. This letter is not from us! The city never asks you to enter registration data on websites”, the administration said.

The City of Vienna also shared a picture of the letter – with printed warnings of its fake content. 

The scammers target residents of Vienna, telling them they must update or enter their personal data on a website. The data can then be used to clone identities or extort money from the victims, for example. 

The city added: “Do not follow the link in the letter and never enter your registration data in the web form! Registrations in the Central Register of Residents can only be made in person at a city registration office or online via a federal application.”

Fake messages

Scams with fake messages have become more popular in Austria over the years. Last year, several residents nationwide received a text message regarding a “seizure” by the tax office. Clicking on a link would take you to a fake site mimicking the tax office in Austria with a request to transfer €379 to an Austrian bank account.

Also in 2023, thousands of people across Austria received messages from fraudsters pretending to be an Austrian bank. In the messages, people are told they need to update their access to their online bank account, or it will expire in the next few days. The recipients are then given a link to click on where they can enter their bank details – but this is a con, the Federal Criminal Police Office said at the time.

What to do if I get targeted?

Police have urged people to keep in mind that banks and governments will never send links to you asking you to unlock your account or give them personal information. 

They also say people should only install apps from known sources and that no one should enter details of their bank account and/or payment cards when prompted if it is not clear who the person asking is. 

READ ALSO: Austrian police warn public about new ‘WhatsApp scam’

People should delete any suspicious messages they receive or hang up on callers. 

“In case of doubt, contact your personal bank advisor and inquire about the message sent to you,” added police.

“In the event of damage, inform your bank immediately and report the matter to a police station.”

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VIENNA

Vienna Festival director Milo Rau hits back at anti-Semitism accusations

One of the latest events in Europe to be hit with accusations of anti-Semitism, the Vienna Festival kicks off Friday, with its new director, Milo Rau, urging that places of culture be kept free of the "antagonism" of the Israel-Hamas war while still tackling difficult issues.

Published: 17 May 2024 14:48 CEST
Vienna Festival director Milo Rau hits back at anti-Semitism accusations

As the conflict in Gaza sharply polarises opinion, “we must be inflexible” in defending the free exchange of ideas and opinions, the acclaimed Swiss director told AFP in an interview this week.

“I’m not going to take a step aside… If we let the antagonism of the war and of our society seep into our cultural and academic institutions, we will have completely lost,” said the 47-year-old, who will inaugurate the Wiener Festwochen, a festival of theatre, concerts, opera, film and lectures that runs until June 23rd in the Austrian capital and that has taken on a more political turn under his tenure.

The Swiss director has made his name as a provocateur, whether travelling to Moscow to stage a re-enactment of the trial of Russian protest punk band Pussy Riot, using children to play out the story of notorious Belgian paedophile Marc Dutroux, or trying to recruit Islamic State jihadists as actors.

Completely ridiculous 

The Vienna Festival has angered Austria’s conservative-led government — which is close to Israel — by inviting Greek former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and French Nobel Prize winner for literature Annie Ernaux, both considered too critical of Israel.

A speech ahead of the festival on Judenplatz (Jews’ Square) by Israeli-German philosopher Omri Boehm — who has called for replacing Israel with a bi-national state for Arabs and Jews —  also made noise.

“Who will be left to invite?  Every day, there are around ten articles accusing us of being anti-Semitic, saying that our flag looks like the Palestinian flag, completely ridiculous things,” Rau said, as he worked from a giant bed which has been especially designed by art students and installed at the festival office.

Hamas’ bloody October 7th assault on southern Israel and the devastating Israeli response have stoked existing rancour over the Middle East conflict between two diametrically opposed camps in Europe.

In this climate, “listening to the other side is already treachery,” lamented the artistic director.

“Wars begin in this impossibility of listening, and I find it sad that we Europeans are repeating war at our level,” he said.

As head of also the NTGent theatre in the Belgian city of Ghent, he adds his time currently “is divided between a pro-Palestinian country and a pro-Israeli country,” or between “colonial guilt” in Belgium and “genocide guilt” in Austria, Adolf Hitler’s birthplace.

Institutional revolution

The “Free Republic of Vienna” will be proclaimed on Friday as this year’s Vienna Festival celebrates. according to Rau, “a second modernism, democratic, open to the world” in the city of the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, and artist and symbolist master Gustav Klimt.

Some 50,000 people are expected to attend the opening ceremony on the square in front of Vienna’s majestic neo-Gothic town hall.

With Rau describing it as an “institutional revolution” and unlike any other festival in Europe, the republic has its own anthem, its own flag and a council made up of Viennese citizens, as well as honorary members, including Varoufakis and Ernaux, who will participate virtually in the debates.

The republic will also have show trials — with real lawyers, judges and politicians participating — on three weekends.

Though there won’t be any verdicts, Rau himself will be in the dock to embody “the elitist art system”, followed by the republic of Austria and finally by the anti-immigrant far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), which leads polls in the Alpine EU member ahead of September national elections.

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