Fraud – it’s that time of year again…
The season we all love so much is fast approaching, lots of food, family time and gifts. That’s right, it’s Christmas. Unfortunately, fraudsters love this time of year as well. They know that spending goes up as well as people letting their guard down around security and vigilance. Fraudsters will also use incidents, system outages and data breaches to take advantage of us. They will attempt to trick us into giving them information about ourselves, payments etc. This is why we need to be vigilant.
Below is a brief guide of things to look out for during the festive period.
How will fraudsters attempt to deceive us?
Fraudsters are getting more and more sophisticated in the way they attempt to get their hands on our money. Below are some of the most common ways:
•Phishing – sending emails pretending to be from a reputable company in order to get us to share financial details, card number etc. Check that the email address is genuine.
•Smishing – sending a text message (SMS) to try and get us to share private information. Reputable companies will not do this.
•Vishing – making phone calls or leaving voicemails pretending to be from a reputable company to get us to share private information. If you receive an unexpected call and they start asking for security identification information – don’t give it. They rang you – it could be anyone.
Fraudsters may try and hit us through a phone call apparently from a bank branch with someone pretending to be a new member of staff, asking you to help them to do something they should be able to do themselves. This could be things like ordering a card, changing an address, making a transfer etc.
These are just a few of the ways fraudsters will attempt to dupe us into giving them private financial information.