Facility takeover

It is a fraud that happens when the existing customer's account is hijacked through phishing or other methods like social engineering. The client assumes they are talking to a legitimate firm representative and divulge all the personal information. 

The criminals use the data collected by such methods is used by the criminals to target customers, extract and steal money from their bank accounts.

How Does It Happen?

Such crimes can happen in various ways, like intercepting the PIN code or resetting the passwords where the criminal impersonating a government representative calls the victim or sends a questionnaire that may include the security question often used in bank accounts. 

For example – they ask the client about their mother's maiden name, the childhood names or birth city, which can be the security question's answer linked to your bank or email account. 

Sometimes, when someone is trying to order a mobile phone, or products or services from a website, you are asked to fill in the details by the criminals posing as delivery companies, or they send a message or call to tell the homeowner they missed a delivery and the details were required for redelivery.

How To Protect Yourself?

• Always examine all the account statements carefully and check the financial records to identify any suspicious transaction, request or modifications in detail. 

• If you find any changes that you did not authorize, you should notify your bank about it and any form of unusual activity. You can ask them to suspend the account if you suspect fraud.

• If you suspect any request or call where the other person is asking for security questions or bank details, you should refuse to answer or ask more and more questions. 

• Instead, try to find out why they are asking, or you can reject or ignore the request immediately. 

• Do not panic or rush to decide about money transfer in a hurry. If you suspect a fraud, report it to the investigation agencies.