Online crooks target West Kerry bank customers

WEST Kerry people are being targeted by online crooks seeking to con them into revealing confidential information that would allow their bank accounts to be cleaned out.

In recent weeks, people throughout West Kerry have received emails purporting to be from AIB and warning of an impending deadline for setting up ‘strong customer authentication’. The phishing emails explain that bank customers have just 24 hours to correct an error so as to be compliant with a European Directive and they provide a link for people to click to complete the process. The emails look authentic and is apparently from an aib. ie domain email address.

The emails arrived in people’s inboxes following the recent implementation of the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2), a European directive which requires all financial institutions to implement strong customer authentication as part of their online financial transactions process. The rogue emails advise that strong customer authentication has not been set up properly, however in reality it is a scam and an attempt to solicit financial information from unsuspecting people.

This is not the first time that this email scam has circulated and The Kerryman has previously contacted AIB asking what they intend to do to protect their customers. A spokesperson said that “AIB has alerted our customers to a scam alert and we recommend our customers consult the AIB security centre (www. AIB.ie/securitycentre) for the latest security warnings. We have communicated alerts to our customers via social media, internet banking log-in and the www.aib.ie home page.”

The fraudsters are becoming wiser,in this instance they have tailored a message and distributed it to coincide with a known change in practice by financial institutions. The advice remains to be alert to criminal activity when carrying out online transactions and to be extremely cautious around any email from a financial institution that requires you to do something urgently.

Meanwhile, it was reported recently that, despite warnings, people are still using open wifi networks (a wifi that does not have a strong password) for online financial transactions. This is dangerous: online shoppers who use open wifi are completely vulnerable to hackers who are constantly snooping for transactions made on unsecured wifi.