Beware of these phishing attempts, SBI tells customers
The bank has alerted its customers against phishing attempts on all platforms from emails to matrimonial portals.
There are very few of us who haven’t received emails announcing that we have won a jackpot in some lottery offering millions of dollars or some unknown person in a faraway land bequeathing us as astounding fortune. All we have to do is to claim it by sending our personal details.
State Bank of India has cautioned its customers, and citizens in general, to be vigilant against such phishing attempts that are now taking place through almost all platforms we use in our daily lives.
Phishing refers to the fraudulent practice of sending emails and other communication purportedly from reputed companies with the ulterior motive of prompting respondents to reveal their personal information that is supposed to be secret. Typically this information is passwords, credit card/debit card numbers, PINs, etc.
SBI said fraudsters are active on all platforms trying to target unsuspecting customers.
Even matrimonial portals
These happen over email, phone, social media, and even matrimonial portals.
The common phishing scams in the country pertaining to credit cards and banking tools, OTPs that are sent for banking transactions, fake government schemes or websites and documents in cloud storage, fake job scams, and lottery said the bank.
You can also receive emails from fraudsters posing as government bodies and those posing to be organisers of sports events of entertainment programmes, concerts, etc.
Customer base
State Bank of India, the country’s largest commercial bank, has more than 49 crore customers, a number that is more than the total population of the US, Germany, and France.
Flagging the issue of cybersecurity IBM chairman Arvind Krishna said on Tuesday that it is going to be the issue of the decade.
“It is where the value lies. The value lies in the data and people are going to come after that data,” Krishna said.
Cybercrimes
According to National Crime Record Bureau data, 2067 ATM frauds were reported in the country in 2019. The number of online banking frauds was 2,091 and frauds related to OTP was 549. The number of credit/debit card frauds was at 367.
In comparison, the number of ATM frauds, online banking frauds, OTP-related frauds, and credit/debit card frauds were 1,280, 968, 319, and 367.
Therefore, the rise in ATM frauds between these two years was by 61%, while online banking frauds rose by 116% and OTP-related frauds went up by 72%. Credit/debit card frauds increased at a slower pace, by about 19%.
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