the police, financial sector regulators and trading standards enforcers who fight against fraud. Other agencies like Citizen’s Advice offer support and information to assist those who have fallen victim to fraud.
Here are a few key ways to practice ‘safe payments’.
If you get a text message or email claiming to be from your bank asking you to do something, stop. Call your bank using only the phone number on the back of your debit card, not the number in the text message or email which could be the bad guys who will get you on the phone and seek to trick you into moving your money.
If you are in the middle of a significant transaction like a house purchase or buying an expensive item and you receive instructions by text or email on how to make a payment, stop. Do not accept bank payment instructions by text or email without double-checking directly with the party to whom you intend to send the money. Use their phone number to contact them, not the one on the text or email. Assume that their text or email account may have been hacked.
If you have a supplier that you pay regularly from your bank account for goods or services and they send you an email or an invoice by email or post that changes their bank payment information (sort code and account number), stop. Call your supplier and confirm directly with them whether their bank payment instructions have changed and, if so, whether the payment instructions provided to you match theirs.
Many frauds are prevented, and fraud scams uncovered by customers being careful and double-checking texted and emailed instructions in this way.
Use of email to keep in touch with family and friends and for the usual low-risk business communication is convenient and easy. But normal email is not secure. We see many examples of criminals being able to access the email accounts of individuals and businesses where they can steal personal information or impersonate someone they have been dealing with to take some action for the criminal’s benefit. Using email to send sensitive personal information, especially your personal and financial details is not a safe practice. Trusting information you receive in a text or email to send money to someone else without double-checking is also not a safe practice.
Responding to a text or email by calling the phone number provided is not a safe practice. The criminals may be the ones answering your call.
Here in the Channel Islands we are fortunate to approach the end of 2020 able to be out in our communities but mindful that we may at some point have to shelter again to keep safe. Let us resolve to embrace all we have learned about technology’s ability to help compensate for such isolation; but let us all be vigilant and fully aware that our reliance upon technology has opened us up to greater risk of being separated from our money by amoral and highly skilled criminals taking advantage of the situation.
It may be a hassle. It may take a few minutes of your time. But imagine how long it would take to earn back the amount lost to criminals. Like many of the new behaviours we have had to adopt to protect ourselves against the threats that arose in 2020, safe payment behaviour will help prevent fraud. That is something we should be sharing with others during this pandemic…so spread the word.
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Beyond 20/20 - Finance Page 35
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