Our editorial team also received the message, on several occasions. One is circulating these days new wave of fraudulent SMS which pass themselves off as urgent communications from the “Centro Unico Primario” – a non-existent name, which does not correspond to the CUP (Single Booking Centre) of the national health service.
The text of the message, always from several senderswith numbers that change from time to timereads:
Please urgently contact our CUP Centro Unico Primario offices on 89349071 (or 89342211, the proposed number is always different) for important communications concerning you
The 893 area code is an immediate warning signbecause these are numbers associated with paid services, with potentially high costs for those who make the call.
Watch out for scams
The mechanism is proven: references to public health and an artificial sense of urgency are leveraged to push the recipient to call back. Once you make the call, you risk incurring high charges or further scam attempts.
The advice is clear: ignore the message, do not call the number back, do not click on any links and do not provide any personal data. It is possible to report the SMS to the Postal Police. For any health communication, refer exclusively to the official channels of the local health authorities and the relevant Region, and remember that the public health system does not contact citizens via the so-called “premium numbers”those with the usual prefixes – 89x, 199, 178, etc… – which are (almost) always paid for by the caller.
