Tweeting about banking troubles You're a fraudster's dream

Customers Posting Complaints On Social Media Face Risks

The number of people who prefer to post their complaints on social media sites has grown, representing a major shift from the traditional methods and private to the public domain, creating challenges and even opportunities for some unscrupulous users. 

Furthermore, complaints made in the public domain create pressure on the institution, and if the bank does not respond, it becomes visible to all the audience, potentially impacting its reputation. 

But, there are many negative effects of such publication where the visitors who are not directly involved get access to the private details of the account holder. In addition, there can be lengthy exchanges between the firm and the victim that can lead to the disclosure of private data.  

Buyers find social media a great place to voice their complaints but engagement through these platforms can be excessively amplifying and encouraging others to participate in unproductive discussions.  

Many bank clients tweet about the problems related to their transactions on social media sites, and it is common to find users frustrated with bank's services tweeting their concerns when it goes down due to network/ server failures or suffers delays caused by computer migration, some users immediately post about it on social platforms. 

Unfortunately, the rate of frauds through bank accounts has increased several times after the users posted such complaints. Banks state the scammers get the details about a person's bank account through publicly accessible domains. In addition, the details are shared online to make it easier for fraudsters to steal your identity. 

TSB Investigation 

It was the case of Britains' TSB, where after a computer system migration, the bank left some accounts locked out. After the blackout of around 1300 accounts, TSB got a daily attempt of fraud over 70 times. 

The inquiry said they could not recognise how the crooks got the information about their clients and later said it was connected to the social media activity.   

The messed up machines led to the loss of 70 million pounds. Some non-TSB clients got texts about their (non-existent) accounts; furthermore, the mail asked users to approve payments.  The institution stated they were not accountable for authorised money transfers made by a genuine party. 

How Do Scammers Impersonate Legitimate Institutions?

Con artists often impersonate popular institutions or eCommerce sites to extract valuable data. For example, suppose you get messages asking you to enter the payment method with links to check the address. First, check the web addresses as links from legitimate sites do not contain jumbled numbers or letters. 

In case of messages posted along with employment offers where many are eligible, they will ask you to fill in the date of birth and the social security number, only to commit identity theft. Sometimes, they ask to transfer funds to another account in the name of supplies for training for the non-existent position.   

They send bogus job offers like vacancies for assistants, receptionists and may post creative messages to gain attention. They aim to get your digital payment app details, and they send links to their pages to get sensitive information and credentials to gain access to your accounts. 

Nevertheless, if you post such information on a public platform, they can easily access it. Therefore, banks are encouraging customers to be careful about their data sharing strategies as virtual forums and platforms are the perfect hooks for the scammers where they get to know many others who connect to the same organisation, and it gets easy for them to defraud all who are participating in the dialogue.