How to Distinguish Scams from Genuine Parcel Notifications?
Omniva’s customer service receives reports from people contacted by scammers posing as Omniva representatives via phone calls or messages. How to recognize a scam?
Most scams begin with either a phone call from a Russian-speaking scammer pretending to be an Omniva employee or with an SMS or email appearing to be from Omniva, urging the recipient to click on a link.
Fraudsters typically claim that you have a parcel or a registered letter, but to receive it, you must identify yourself, update your details, or pay a small fee, such as €3.80 for delivery or customs duty.
A scam also circulates in online marketplaces (such as Facebook Marketplace), where a fake account owner expresses interest in buying an item you are selling. However, they insist on paying via an “Omniva service,” requiring you to enter your banking details on a fraudulent Omniva website.
Regardless of the story scammers use, their goal is the same – to trick people into providing their personal data, credit card details or bank account access using PIN1 and PIN2 codes, allowing them to steal significantly more money than the initially mentioned few euros.
Here are six key differences to help distinguish between a legitimate parcel company and fraudsters.
How to Distinguish Scams from Genuine Parcel Notifications?
1. Omniva does not initiate calls in Russian or English. Omniva’s Estonian customer service representatives are capable of communicating in Estonian, English, and Russian if requested by the customer. However, all Omniva Estonia customer service representatives speak Estonian and initiate conversations in Estonian. Fraudsters, on the other hand, usually do not speak Estonian at all; they start the call in Russian or, less frequently, in English and refuse to converse in Estonian.
2. Omniva writes in correct Estonian. Scams are often easy to spot due to poor language use, as many fraudsters do not actually speak Estonian and rely on machine translation for their messages.
3. Omniva does not request the transmission of banking or personal information, nor the processing of payments via phone or message. Omniva will never ask for a customer’s credit card details, bank username, PIN1 or PIN2 codes, or any other banking information over the phone. Omniva does not ask its customers to confirm payments over the phone. Likewise, Omniva does not request personal data, such as a copy of an identity document, via phone or SMS. Only fraudsters do this.
4. Omniva uses the domains Omniva.ee, Omniva.lv, and Omniva.lt. Omniva may also ask customers to update delivery details or pay customs duties, but in such cases, customers are directed to Omniva’s official domain, which always ends in Omniva.ee (Estonia), Omniva.lv (Latvia), or Omniva.lt (Lithuania). If the link you are asked to click on leads to any other domain, it is a fraudulent site created by scammers. Fraudsters may use Omniva’s name in fake website addresses, but they cannot use the genuine Omniva domain.
Omniva’s correct Estonian self-service website where you can update parcel information and pay customs duties is minu.omniva.ee (domain: Omniva.ee).
Fraudsters, however, use addresses like omniva.myshipment.com (domain: myshipment.com) or kohaletoimetamine-pakett.email.ink (domain: email.ink).
Omniva emails also come from addresses ending in @omniva.ee, @omniva.lv, or @omniva.lt.
Fraudsters use email addresses ending in domains like @omnivapackages.com, which is not an Omniva domain.
5. If you aren’t waiting for a parcel, it’s likely a scam. Fraudsters do not know who is expecting a parcel. They randomly target people, hoping to catch those who are indeed waiting for a delivery and are therefore more likely to fall for the scam. If you receive a message about a parcel you haven’t sent, ordered or expected, and you are asked to pay a fee for receiving it, it is a scam.
6. Omniva knows your details, but fraudsters do not. Sometimes, scammers coincidentally reach people who are genuinely expecting a parcel from Omniva. The difference is that Omniva has accurate parcel information – such as the recipient’s and sender’s phone number or name, and the parcel’s tracking route. Fraudsters know nothing about your actual package. They cannot answer specific questions about the parcel. If you receive a message claiming to be from Omniva with a tracking code but suspect fraud, you can verify if a parcel with such code exists on Omniva’s official website or self-service platform.
If you have any doubts about a call or message you have received, contact Omniva directly at [email protected] or call 6616616 to confirm its authenticity.