Top 5 ways to prevent your account from net banking fraud

A few weeks ago, there was news that surfaced on the internet about the final verdict of two men in the U.K. who siphoned £2 million via fraudulent bank accounts.

There was another news story that spoke about banking policies in the U.K. that makes it easier for victims who have lost their money due to these illicit practices and banking scams to get a refund from their respective banks or banking institutions.

But, ever since the number of net banking frauds increased, financial institutions began ignoring these policies and people who fall victim to these deceitful practices.

There was an elderly couple that fell into the traps of net banking scams and lost a ton of savings. These people were living off of their pension money and losing it in the blink of an eye is a huge problem.

People across the world are losing their money because they fall prey to these practices. It is a stumbling block on the sides of both the victim as well as the financial institution. According to Shift processing, in 2018, $24.26 Billion was lost due to payment card fraud worldwide.

These incidents and numbers show that the risk of you losing your money is quite high, and with one small ignorant step, it can all leave your account within seconds.

With the increase in usage of net banking for transactions and payments using card details, the threat of being vulnerable has witnessed a spike.

However, there are a couple of simple things that you can do, to make sure you don’t fall for these frauds when you are availing of net banking services. Let’s look at what those are.

• Security Patches and Solutions 

One of the important reasons why net banking became popular is because of its ability to be carried out on handy electronic devices such as mobile phones, laptops, and PCs, anytime and anywhere.

Nowadays most of these transactions are carried out on mobile phones which also have other applications on them. To ensure that the transactions and details stored are not exposed or imposed with vulnerabilities, there are security patches and solutions that make sure there is a security bubble when net banking services are availed.

Especially in mobile phones, these patches take care of any loopholes there might be in the system and protect it against online malware and hacks. Many mobile marketing services also fall prey to this. 

• Beware of fake messages 

There is a classic threat that even though people are aware of it, still manages to enter the systems of victims. This threat is of fake messages that ask for your personal information with regards to net banking details and data.

This happens a lot with individuals as well as businesses, where they receive an email or a message from the attacker imposing as their bank or financial institution asking them to share their information to secure their accounts that are at risk.

There are also instances when these attackers call the victims imposing as bank representatives and asking for details.

• Never use someone else’s device for net banking 

Well, we have all been in situations where we need to make a payment or do some banking stuff immediately, but are away from our electronic devices and end up using somebody else’s device or worse, a public system.

This directly translates into your account and net banking information being exposed to hazards and cybercrimes. The history is the evidence of how marketing data breaches can lead to serious and deeper-extent cybercrimes where people and companies end up losing all their funds because their data was spilled. According to the ascent, “There were 650,572 cases of identity theft in 2019.”

• 3rd party applications or websites 

Now, this is no secret that we all have at least once in our lives used an online shopping application and paid for it via net banking.

People do that all the time, but what they fail to check or realize is that there may be a chance that the payment gateway of this particular application or website might not be secure.

If the payment gateway is broken and not of the utmost security, avoid using it. Scam artists can easily enter these gateways and take control of your account as well as your money. There is a high risk of your steps being recorded and traced back to gain access.

• Constant Surveillance 

This is something that doesn’t require much of your time or effort and is as simple as it can get. Always, always ensure that you keep an eye on the transaction history and account balance of your net banking account.

There have been incidents where people have not even realized that their account has been tampered with, and their money’s gone until it’s too late to do anything.

Simple tips and tricks will keep you at bay from fraudsters and sophisticated hackers and your funds will be safe and secure.

Bob Carver, “Not only malware that will enumerate systems, but will autonomously map entire networks, develop a game plan to locate the “crown jewels” and determine how to embezzle them.”