Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Don’t be caught out by phishing criminals
and cellphone company.
Banks, he said, needed immediately to provide customers with comprehensive advice on how to secure their accounts, protect their accounts and computers, to prevent any further losses.
“Why does the bank not accept any responsibility for the loss and refund the customer? If their money is in the bank surely it should accept responsibility and liability.”
FNB head of digital banking Karen Botes said Granger had been a victim of phishing.
She said Granger alerted FNB on Friday last week that her account had been compromised. By midday on Tuesday the bank had confirmation of the recovered funds from the recipient account.
According to Botes, 96 percent of funds phished were recovered by the bank. “The method used to defraud the victims was via phishing, when the fraudster obtains the customer’s confidential information. Phishing as a means of fraud has been a problem for many years.
“We continually warn and educate our customers to never release their confidential banking information or to respond to unsolicited emails including threats to close their accounts if they do not ‘update’ their information via a link provided or offers of prizes/refunds via a link in an email.”
Botes said FNB also offered free software to protect customers from phishing attacks, and that the bank investigated each suspected fraud case in detail.
“It is the bank’s policy to conduct a comprehensive investigation on all reported cases, and to provide clients with a detailed analysis of the matter upon conclusion of the investigation. We assure customers that we employ a robust security framework which is multi-layered, and accordingly our electronic channels remain a convenient and secure option for banking.”
Kalyani Pillay, chief executive of the South African Banking Risk Info Centre (Sabric), said internet banking fraud incidents reported to the banking industry were down 44 percent last year compared to the previous year.
She said criminals continually looked for ways to circumvent security measures, also using technology to their advantage. “Having said that, phishing remains the most prevalent way of harvesting confidential information and this is not a new modus operandi. The stolen credentials are used to unlawfully access the internet banking profile of the victim and an unauthorised SIM swop is done to ensure that the OTP sent to the account holder is available to the criminal, who then moves funds illegally. Again this is not new.”
Pillay said combating internet fraud remained a priority for the banking industry,
Advocate Clive Pillay, the ombudsman for banking services, said he received 643 complaints of phishing last year, compared to 752 in 2014.
He said banking security measures were becoming more sophisticated.
He advised consumers never to respond to an email appearing to be from the bank requesting personal details.
“Your bank will never ask you to confirm or update your account details via email. Never follow a link on a mail to access your bank’s website, always access the website by physically typing the name of the web address that you were given when you signed up for the internet banking in your , and confirm that you are on a secure site by looking for the little ‘ lock’ icon on your browser before logging on.”
He said consumers should never provide their online ID password or PIN to anyone and never write them down or share them, not even with a bank official.
He said consumers should avoid doing internet banking in places such as internet cafés, change their PIN and password frequently, ensure they have the latest anti-virus software applications on their computer and that they download all security patches for their operating system in a timely fashion.
joseph.booysen@inl.co.za