Swedish police have launched a national campaign featuring celebrities who urge the public to be deliberately impolite when they suspect a scam. The initiative follows a year in which cybercriminals extracted 5.7 billion SEK (about $580 million) from victims, with the over-60s hit hardest. The core message, as stated by Polisen, is that rudeness can be a form of self-protection against skilled social engineers who build trust and urgency simultaneously.
The campaign includes actors Suzanne Reuter, Lennart Jähkel, Christina Schollin, and journalist Claes Elfsberg, running through October 11 across print, social media, and TV. Reuter, one of the participants, noted that many older people are raised to be polite and accommodating, but today they must question more. Police operations leader Robert Öhman added that fraudsters often work closely with violent criminal networks, so reducing scam success also cuts funding for other serious crimes.
Telephone scams dominate, typically starting with SMS messages that impersonate authorities like banks or government agencies. Victims are then connected to scripted fraudsters. Sweden also faces fake police officer scams, where criminals in uniform offer to store valuables and then steal them. Police stress that legitimate organizations never collect gold or credit cards from homes, and urge people to shut the door at the slightest hesitation.
In parallel, Sweden has tightened regulations. Since June, police and the Post and Telecom Agency have cooperated more closely, and amendments to the Electronic Communications Act, effective August 1, require number-based service providers to block suspected fraud communications before they reach recipients. This follows earlier rules targeting spoofed overseas calls. The single source for this report provides no conflicting views, but it does not cover any hardware or compute aspects beyond the telecommunications infrastructure involved in call blocking.