How To Secure Your Data Against Banking And Data Fraud

Hello sir, good afternoon, I’m calling from ABC bank, this is an online identification call, can you please verify your account number, card details and password?

Never fall for this. I repeat, never fall for this.

This is a classic example of Vishing.

Some of us fall for English, some of us fall for the accent.

Sadly but yes, many of us still fall for it, if there is a girl on the phone.

It happens when you are in a hurry, stuck in a traffic jam, in a meeting. These calls are often made at the daytime, where you are most likely to be busy and hundreds of thoughts going inside your head.

Before we dive further into this, let us get familiar with some of the terms that will help you understand these cases better.

Phishing — collecting information from a customer through fake emails.

Vishing — calling a customer, impersonated as a bank executive or an official from the central bank and collecting bank details or to do identity theft.

Smishing — receiving an SMS with a link, when clicked, downloads a malicious program causing theft of data.

Man in the browser — a malware infection into the web browser, in this case, when a user enters his or her details on the website, it gets stolen.

Skimming — robbing the CCTV footage of ATMs acquiring credentials of different customers and withdrawing money from the machine.

SIM swap: This is a far fetched process for performing large amount transactions and thefts. Once the fraudster got your credentials through Phishing, Vishing and Smishing, they will get your SIM blocked and apply for a duplicate one through local retailers.

The service provider will deactivate your SIM (the genuine one), and the new sim which the fraudster has will be activated. After this, it is a piece of cake for him to get an OTP generated and make large fund transfers and withdrawals.

Last but not least, cloning, it can happen online as well as offline.

For example — say, you swiped your card at a restaurant where the PoS (point of sale) is misused to clone cards or enter your card details on a fake shopping site.

Fraudsters acquire your card details then clone your card and use it and before you can realise, there are a large number of transactions or withdrawals have been made.

If you’ve been a victim to any of these unethical practices.

I’m sorry for your loss.

Most recently FaceApp has taken the internet by a storm. The app allows the user to apply different filters to their selfies and got majorly popular for the old filter, the app is made by Wireless Lab a small company from Russia.

The issue with the app is that according to its terms and conditions, the app may use your pictures and credentials in unexpected ways.

Communities of cyber-security have raised red flags against it, confirming that your data may get used or exploited in different unethical ways.

While most of the companies connect with data mining services and often choose manual data mining services to tech append, CRM cleaning and email appending, data appending, skip tracing. This is a good example of how huge sets of data is being collected by new companies and apps and may lead to data fraud, banking and identity theft.

Enough of the general knowledge, let’s talk about preventions.

What are the effective ways to prevent this?

General Awareness

Common sense, which is not very common these days.

Every day I meet people who are so talented and brilliant with their work & day to day lives that it makes me awfully sad to see how these people only become the regular victims of such frauds.

No bank personnel will ever call you for such verification queries. If you get a call like this, immediately cut off the call or rather complain about it. There is no rocket science in it and you should know it.

Stop Using Unprotective Sites

If you are a shopaholic, this is for you.

Many people in their shopping spree tend to forget that apart from 4 to 5 major websites not every one of them is safe for online shopping and net banking.

Have you ever noticed, how there are so many websites regarding fashion & accessories and not with other items?

Because a huge amount of people are interested in shirts, jeans, dresses, and accessories.

There are payment getaways which aren’t safe and can be easily bent to get your bank and personal details. Do not use sites which you haven’t heard about else that dress or those pair of shoes will cost you way more than that.

Do Not Download Apps Outside Playstore.

I know you won’t be doing this purposefully but fraudsters have a way to trick you into it.

You may receive a call that your bank has come up with a new app and a link to download it has been sent to you via SMS. Mostly these links will open in your mobile’s browser and not in your play store.

Do not trust such links.

Once you download such apps and enter your details, the malware program may get downloaded to your phone accessing your personal files or the credentials you entered are no longer safe.

Keeping Changing Your Passwords Frequently

This is an effective practice to save yourself, I would advise you to keep changing the passwords of your social & professional accounts once every 45 days.

This is a healthy practice and in a way saves you from different prank calls and data thefts.

Data Fraud

This is an entirely different region, a large number of population is said to be on social media platforms and upload tons of pictures, videos, check-ins, personal views and details daily.

You are naive if you think that your data is safe on these social media platforms, on the contrary, you have no idea how all that you do, say, like, comment and share on these social media websites reflect your personality and can be used against you.

A whole new identity can be created with minimal pieces of information that you deliberately shared on these platforms.

In 2018, Cambridge Analytica working on an election campaign deliberately accessed data & personal details of millions of users on Facebook and was accused of data theft & fraud practices.

The scam became a critical issue, when Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, choose not to speak about it for several days, waiting for a final audit report being worked on from his side of professionals.

He said, ”I’ve been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” he said. “I started Facebook, and at the end of the day, I’m responsible for what happens on our platform. I’m serious about doing what it takes to protect our community.”

Mark accepted it in his statement that — “We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t, then we don’t deserve to serve you.”

This is, again, a perfect example of data theft.

Automated OTP

• You sign in to a new app.
• The app sends an OTP to your mobile phone for verification.

You don’t have to type the OTP, within seconds the app detects the OTP, and it gets automatically sorted in the OTP box. Looks nice & cool, right? Let’s talk about the problem here.

The number is getting verified not the device it is on.

So, hypothetically speaking if you leave your phone unattended for let’s say five minutes and go somewhere urgently, it only takes a minute for a cunning mind to install your SIM in their device and get an OTP generated. That’s it,

Sorry, but you just got hacked!!

This is how identity thefts are being done.

I’m not trying to scare you off, but this can happen to anyone of us. These are in general precautions that a person must be aware of and practice duly.

With the help of this blog, I’m trying to convey to you what possible identity thefts, banking and data fraud can be practiced.

Never take it for granted or lightly, this can happen with anyone, the victims are never targeted.

If you’ve been reading this blog with interest, you will observe that most of the incidents & measures that I’ve talked about are based on common sense and simple tactics -

• Not attending unknown calls.
• Posting minimal social media content.
• Not answering to random credential inquiries.
• Not entertaining fake calls and messages.
• Changing passwords frequently or in regular intervals of time.
• Not downloading unauthorized apps outside play stores.
• Not visiting new & suspicious websites.
• Stop using any payment getaways with your card and bank details.
• Not clicking on spammy links.

If you only apply these everyday tips carefully, you will save yourself from a lot of online threats.

I believe to have successfully made my point.