Warning: fake Klimabonus texts are stealing bank logins
A wave of text messages is going round Austria promising the return of the Klimabonus. There is no Klimabonus. The payment was abolished in January 2025 and has not come back. Every message of this kind is an attempt to get into your bank account.
The text arrives from a sender that displays as KLIMAGUTSCHRIFT and reads roughly: check your entitlement now and secure your payment, applications open only for a short time. It links to a site called klimagutschrift.at, a domain registered or altered only shortly before the wave began. Earlier versions of the same scam used klimabonus.help and klima-bonus.app, and a version arriving by email has been circulating for a few days.
The site is convincing. It carries the Finance Ministry's logo prominently and names the ministry in its imprint. It announces a comeback of the Klimabonus with up to 400 euros available from May 2026 for anyone who registers in time. Then it asks for your personal details, then for your IBAN under a line confirming you want the payment made to that account, and then it opens what looks like your bank's online login screen. That screen is the point of the whole exercise. Shortly after the details are entered, victims report a phone call from someone presenting themselves as a bank employee.
Simply opening the page does no harm. The damage begins when data is sent.
Three things are worth fixing in your mind, because this scam keeps returning under new names. First, the Klimabonus does not exist, so anything promising it is false, whatever logo it carries. Second, no Austrian authority will ever ask for your IBAN or your online banking login through a link in a text message. Third, the time pressure is the tell, not the offer.
If you have already entered anything, call your bank immediately and have the account blocked, then report it to the police. Reporting matters even when nothing was lost, because it is what allows the authorities to act against the domain.