According to a recent Kaspersky survey¹, more than half of users in South Africa (59%) faced banking fraud at least once in the first half of 2020. In most of the cases (74%) the banking fraud occurred via the phone, while the calls were received mainly during business hours: Monday to Thursday, from 11am to 6pm.

Fraudsters are seriously preparing for such calls and are actively using social engineering methods. In 40% of cases, they mentioned the correct name and surname of the person whom they called and in 20% of cases they even knew bank card credentials. The most common myths were the need to confirm the data (60%), information about the banking card blocking (44%) and the loan offer (62%). In 26% of the cases, the criminals were trying to get a code from SMS or card data, and in 35% of the cases they tried to convince a person to transfer money to an allegedly secure account.

“Financial scams continue to grow, in particular the share of those who faced financial malware in the first three quarters of 2020 nearly doubled in comparison with the previous year in South Africa. But at the same time, unfortunately, many people still do not know how to recognise criminals and lose money as a result of simple scam schemes. In case of a phone scam it’s better to end the conversation and call the bank's official number should there be any suspicion,” says Amin Hasbini, Head of Middle East Research Center, Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) at Kaspersky.

Kaspersky shares a reminder of the basic security tips that will help you to stay safe from scammers:

• Be wary of any calls from people who claim to be bank employees
• Do not follow dubious links from SMS or messages received in messengers
• Never tell anyone CVV or codes from SMS or push notifications
• In case of any suspicion, immediately hang up and call the bank yourself at the number indicated on the back of the card
• Get cybersecurity on your phone – the best way to protect your online privacy and data on your mobile is to protect it. We recommend installing Kaspersky Security Cloud

Reference:
¹The survey was conducted in conjunction with Toluna research agency in June-July 2020.