Fraudsters purporting
to be from your bank can be convincing, but there are some things your bank
will never ask you. Your bank will never ask for more than three digits from
your PIN to confirm your identity, for example.
New ways to bank – by telephone, the Internet and now your
mobile – have saved us a lot of time but have also opened up opportunities for
fraudsters.
Their tricks normally involve pretending to be your bank’s
representatives, whether on the phone or via email. After convincing you that
they are genuine, they ask you to carry out various plausible-sounding actions
that will result in your account being raided.
This trend is becoming more popular in the country and the
Central Bank of Nigeria is coming up with initiatives to combat electronic
frauds in the banking system.
Here are eight things that fraudsters may ask you to do, but
your bank never will:
1. Call or email to ask for your full PIN or any online banking passwords
If your bank does contact you, perhaps to check that a
transaction was really made by you, it would not ask for more than three digits
from your PIN to confirm your identity, and would never ask for online
passwords.
2. Send someone to your home to collect cash, bank cards or anything else
Having posed on the telephone as a bank employee to extract
key security information such as your full PIN, the criminals may say they are
sending an official courier to your home to collect the corresponding card.
These couriers will have bogus “official” identification.
3. Ask you to authorize the transfer of funds to a new account or hand over
cash
Often criminals, posing as a bank, will instruct you that
your account is under threat – usually from a “corrupt employee” or “cyber
criminals”. You will be instructed to make an online transfer of money into a
new “safe account” – actually the fraudster’s – or hand cash to a bogus
employee.
4. Ask you to carry out a ‘test transaction’ online
Criminals pretending to be from a bank sometimes email
customers asking them to perform a “test” transaction online, perhaps because
of a “technical problem” on their account.
5. Send an email with a link to a website that asks you to enter your online
banking details
This is the well-known “phishing” scam.
6. Ask you to email or text personal or banking information
Don’t do it, even if the email address appears to belong to
the bank.
7. Provide banking services through any mobile apps other than the bank’s
official apps
To download your bank’s mobile banking app, follow the link
from its official website.
8. Call to advise you to buy diamonds, land or other commodities
Reputable investment firms do not cold-call. Fraudulent
“boiler rooms” can be very persistent and persuasive, so just put the phone
down.
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