There is currently an increasing number of phishing emails in circulation German pensioners deliberately set a trap. The German Pension Insurance (DRV) warns about this on its website. And that’s not all. Fraudsters often recreate the DRV’s online presence in a deceptively realistic manner. Anyone who searches the Internet for terms such as “pensioner information” runs the great risk of landing on one of these fakes. And then you have to pay.

FOCUS online has worked out the differences. And identifies how you can recognize the original and protect yourself from counterfeits. Here are the facts:

• The official URL of the German pension insurance is: www.deutsche-rentenversicherung.de
• Access to the customer portal and services such as requesting notices are available to those who use it for free. On it the DRV itself also points out.
• Using search terms like “pensioner information” on Google often leads to fake pages
• Anyone who lands on a fake site runs the great risk of being forced into payments by fraudsters

Reporters venture onto fake pension site

For a demonstration, FOCUS created a new identity online: that of Josef Nathues. The completely made-up person has an equally fictitious social security number, fictitious date of birth and a non-existent address. FOCUS online has also set up email access for communication. Here is the data (any similarities to real people are purely coincidental):

• Joseph Nathues
• June 18, 1961
• Mustermannstraße 134, 81549 Munich

On one fake Page called pensioner information, which the Really similar to real ones sees, Josef Nathues requests the following information: “Information about the report to the tax authorities from the year 2024-2025”. To do this, he uses his randomly thrown together social security number, which is also his pension insurance number.

Less than two minutes later an email: The request is said to have been forwarded to the responsible authority. Attached is an invoice for a service fee of 29.90 euros. The first trap. A link asks you to pay the amount as quickly as possible. In addition, the email does not use characters like “ä” in its font. This indicates an author with an English keyboard, because there are no such umlauts outside of the German-speaking world.

A few seconds later, the suspicion is confirmed. The link leads to the external site of an online payment service provider. With an address in the British capital London, Covent Garden. At this point, FOCUS online stops the experiment – Josef Nathues does not provide payment information such as a credit card number.

Questions for information remain unanswered

Instead, he now reveals himself via email as a person who was completely invented by a press company in Germany and demands answers. Why do you charge a fee for services that are free in Germany? What did you plan to do with the data you collected before you found out it was made up?

The answer only comes the day after: The email address given in the sender bar can no longer be reached. A number of possible reasons are listed, none of which are particularly convincing.

Conclusion: If you find out about this online Pension topic If you would like to find out more, be sure to stick to the official DRV URL: www.deutsche-rentenversicherung.de. In principle, other sites should not be visited. If you still end up on one: Small mistakes such as rewriting umlauts with “ae” or “ue” can indicate fraudulent practices.

You can also find further information about this on the DRV website Scams such as phishing emails in which unknown persons try to access your data through links, as well as ransomware attacks in which programs lock your computer and demand a ransom in order to unlock it.