Smishing — scam texts posing as the Post, the Zoll, the Finanzamt or your bank — is now one of the most common frauds in Germany and Austria. Answer a few quick questions and this checker tells you whether the message fits the scam pattern, shows you the body’s own official statement that gives it away, and tells you exactly where to report it. Free, anonymous, nothing to install.
A real German or Austrian authority — the Finanzamt, the Zoll, your bank — reaches you with a Bescheid (a formal letter) by post, or inside your official portal (FinanzOnline, your bank’s app). Never an SMS with a link. If a message breaks that rule — whatever name is on it — treat it as a scam: don’t tap the link, go to the source yourself, and report the number.
Most scam-text advice hands you a checklist — misspellings, odd umlauts, urgency — and wishes you luck. The trouble is that the texts doing the real damage in Germany and Austria aren’t the broken ones. They’re the clean, plausible Post and bank messages that slide into a thread of genuine alerts, arriving the same week you actually ordered a parcel from outside the EU or logged into FinanzOnline. A checklist fails exactly when the message looks right.
German-speaking bureaucracy gives you a sharper tool than any checklist: the Bescheid. A real demand from the Zoll, the Finanzamt or the BMF is a formal written decision — delivered by post or into your FinanzOnline Databox, with a case number and a Frist measured in weeks. That formality is not red tape; it is your shield. The scam’s fatal flaw is that it uses the one channel a real authority never uses — the instant, tap-here SMS — and manufactures the one thing a real Bescheid never has: a 24-hour countdown.
So you don’t have to judge whether a text “feels” trustworthy. You only have to notice that it’s an unexpected message asking you to act through a link, under time pressure — and then go to the source yourself: your post, your portal, your bank’s app. For where every kind of scam gets reported, see how to report a scam in Germany and in Austria; for the anatomy of the fake Österreichische Post text, read the Austrian Post customs-fee teardown.
No. German customs state it plainly: 'Steuerbescheide und Zahlungsaufforderungen werden vom Zoll niemals telefonisch, per E-Mail, per SMS, über soziale Medien oder durch eine Nachricht in einem Messenger Dienst … zugestellt.' The Finanzamt, the Bundeszentralamt für Steuern and the Austrian BMF all work the same way — a real tax or customs matter arrives as a Bescheid (a formal written decision) by post or, in Austria, in your FinanzOnline Databox. It has a case reference and a deadline in weeks, and there is never a link to tap.
This is the detail almost everyone gets wrong: in Germany, forwarding a spam SMS to 7726 is unreliable. It is provider-dependent — some carriers support it, but O2/Telefónica has at times billed it as a premium SMS, and many users just get 'Zielrufnummer 7726 ist ungültig.' The dependable route is to report the sender number to the Bundesnetzagentur through its Rufnummernmissbrauch form, use your carrier's own in-app 'Spam melden' button, and forward phishing to the Verbraucherzentrale Phishing-Radar. 7726 is the standard advice in Ireland and the UK — it is not a safe assumption in Germany.
Two channels, both free. Report the number and the message to the RTR's Meldestelle Rufnummernmissbrauch at rufnummernmissbrauch.at — the official body for spam SMS, ping calls, phishing and number spoofing. And report the scam itself to Watchlist Internet, Austria's anti-fraud watchdog, which catalogues active campaigns and warns others. If money has moved, report it to the police on 133.
No. The Post's own position: 'Die Post verlangt nie die Bankdaten (IBAN und BIC) der Empfänger*innen, um reguläre Pakete zustellen zu können.' A Post SMS only ever tells you a parcel's status; it never asks you to pay a customs fee through a link. The fake — often a tiny €2.99 'Einfuhrzoll' — works precisely because real customs duty on a non-EU parcel does exist, so the demand feels plausible. But that real duty is handled with the Post or the Zoll directly, never by tapping a texted link.
It is a call (or text) from someone posing as the police, Europol or a prosecutor, claiming a relative is in trouble or your assets are at risk, to pressure you into handing over cash, valuables or transfers. As polizei-beratung.de states: 'Die Polizei – aber auch Gerichte, Behörden, Banken und die Verbraucherzentrale – wird Sie niemals telefonisch um das Herausgeben Ihrer Wertsachen oder zur Zahlung von Geldbeträgen bitten.' The number on your screen can be spoofed to anything, including a local code or '110'. Hang up, don't engage, then call the police yourself — 110 in Germany, 133 in Austria — to check.
No — and it doesn't pretend to be. The tool gives general guidance based on the published advice of the Zoll, the BMF, the Bundesnetzagentur, the Sparkasse, Bank Austria, Watchlist Internet and polizei-beratung.de; it does not see your actual message. When the answer is uncertain it tells you to treat the message as a scam and verify with the organisation directly through its official portal or app. For a real person to look at a specific message, you can submit a free, confidential case review.
Every fact in this tool comes from these German and Austrian authorities. Click any to verify.