How to Identify when a Scammer Impersonates as a Banker!
Millions of people use social media platforms. Apart from being connected with friends, it is also a great opportunity for businesses to reach a large number of people who are interested in their products and services.
Many business whether small or big choose social platforms to connect directly to their audience, listening to their needs, suggestions or even complaints, to provide better customer service.
While this is really a good tradition as consumers get to share their experience on these platforms, there are however, a few things that you should keep in mind before you get too emotional when sharing your thoughts about the service you recently had, no matter good or bad.
Since social sites are a very good powerful tools to engage with each other, it can also be used by fraudsters and scammers to carry their malpractice against innocents who innocently share too much information about themselves.
Scammers nowadays also visit the social pages of companies where people share their experience, or complaints. They search for those who leave much of their personal information openly not realizing that it can be used by fraudsters with bad intention.
These scammers main purpose is to first take possession of your personal data, such as your first name, last name, phone number, service account number or complaint number, and whatever extra details they can get their hands on, and then they call you by impersonating as service officials to loot you.
Let’s say you recently made a complaint about your banking experience and unwittingly shared more than required details on any social channel. This will invite the scammers to notedown all of your details and will then call you impersonating as bank officials themselves and will say to you something like: 'hi i am ## and i am calling from ## bank and this call is regarding your complaint no. ##' and so on...
They will speak to you so confidently and professionally that it would be difficult for anyone to get suspicious.
The entire conversation is conducted by professionals who use banking terms when speaking, also in the background you'll hear some sounds quite similar to the conversations of operators. These tricks help build trust in the victims and make them lose vigilance.
You may be asked to follow the link to restore access to your account or to resolve the issue that you raised, send an SMS or call a specific number. Share the SMS code or one-time password from SMS. And if you hesitate, you will be rushed and intimidated that something bad will happen on your account if you don't cooperate, etc.
The purpose of such steps is to force you to enter a password and card details so that scammers can gain access to your account and withdraw all funds from it.
What Should You Do?
- The very first thing for you to follow religiously is not to share much of your details openly on public platforms.
- Even when you wish to make a complaint, don't share much of your sensitive information altogether.
- Only after the Social Page official says should you share your contact number or email id that too via personal message. Make sure that you are on the official social page of the company and not on any duplicate page created by the scammers.
- One way to land onto the correct official social page is via company's official website.
- The other important thing that you should always remember is that the bank never asks the consumer for their full account number and payment card details, i.e. card number or even the CVV/CVC code on the back of the card.
- The bank also does not ask for passwords, PINs or OTPs for the sake of solving your banking issues.
- If you receive such a call, it is most definitely not a bank employee, and you should immediately inform the bank and the police.
- If you are not sure if a bank employee called and you suspect fraud, hang up and call the bank's official phone number. You can find the correct phone numbers on the bank's website.
- Remember don't pickup any phone numbers that you see from any Google search results. Scammers also share their own numbers on various forums and websites which may appear on search results. Calling on these fraudsters number will only make matter worst.
- Do not open unfamiliar links from mail or SMS: this way scammers can infect your computer or phone with a virus and steal personal data.
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