Absa warns of upsurge in digital banking fraud cases

 ·2 Feb 2019

Absa has urged customers to always be vigilant against any attempt to dupe them into handing over their “keys to the safe” – card PIN, card CVV, card One Time PIN (OTP), online banking PIN, online banking Password – to third parties.

There is an upsurge in social engineering globally, it said. “Fraudsters use personal data from data breaches to impersonate banks with the sole purpose of tricking customers into granting them access to their money and bank accounts.”

Citing external studies, Absa said that during the first half of 2018, 4.5 billion customer data records globally were reported to have been compromised – 86% of all consumer information has been compromised through spam emails and data breaches. Studies also showed that 97% of customers struggle to differentiate between a Phishing email and a legitimate email.

  • Phishing – impersonation through emails, commonly containing hyperlinks
  • Vishing – impersonation through phone calls
  • SMShing – impersonation through text messages where the customer is requested to open the link and complete the fields

In South Africa, digital banking fraud cases increased by 64% over the past year; these impact the entire financial services industry, Absa said.

Absa head of fraud strategy, Ulrich Janse Van Rensburg, said customers should never approve transaction requests via the mobile banking application (App) if they’re not transacting or if they are not responsible for the transaction.

Absa will never request for its customers’ “keys to the safe” for any reason whatsoever, the bank said.


Read: What to expect from Absa heading into 2019

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