Banking scams and how to avoid them. According to a survey conducted for Facile.it by the mUp Research institute, in the last year over 1.8 million Italians have been victims of fraud attempts on their current accounts, resulting in enormous overall damage: more than 1.1 billion euros.
How do criminals manage to penetrate savers’ defenses? The most frequent attack vectors remain fake phishing emails (36%) and fake SMS (34.4%), followed by deceptive telephone calls (28.8%) and counterfeit websites (16%). There is also no shortage of pitfalls via WhatsApp and Telegram (11.2%).
What makes everything dramatically more credible is the entry of Artificial Intelligence: scammers use software capable of cloning the voices of relatives or bank operators, easily deceiving even the most cunning users.
The victims? It is young people who fall into the trap
The most surprising data from the research disproves a commonplace: those most affected are not the elderly. If the national average of those who suffer an account scam is 4.3%, the percentage rises to 5.1% in the range between 25 and 34 years and skyrockets to 6.2% between 35 and 44 years. Young people and those in their thirties, due to the continuous and casual use of smartphones and home banking, are paradoxically the most exposed subjects.
Then there is a worrying hidden fact: almost one victim in three (32.8%) chooses not to report. The reasons? 46.3% believe that the economic damage suffered was too low to justify the bureaucratic procedure, while 14.6% admit that they did not report out of shame, feeling “naive” for having fallen into the trap.
The defense handbook: 5 rules to secure your account
To avoid seeing your current account emptied, the experts at Facile.it have drawn up five practical self-defense tips:
1) Watch out for Phishing. No bank will ever ask you via email or SMS to enter your credentials, PIN or password. If you receive messages of this type, delete them immediately.
2) Enable SMS/Push notifications. Many lenders offer the option to turn on notifications
automatic (via SMS or app) which alert the customer in the event of movements on the current account. In case of suspicious operations you can block everything promptly.
3) Check the interlocutor (and the site). AI allows you to duplicate a person’s voice. Before concluding any transaction it is mandatory to verify the identity of the interlocutor. The simplest solution is to contact the person using the official number: whether it is a company, or a relative, if you are the one calling the correct number, you can be sure that it is not a virtual clone. If instead of on the phone, you are talking to a website, watch out for clones: check that the site address is correct and that it contains the acronym Https; in this case the information sent to the platform is encrypted and therefore protected from possible intruders.
Furthermore, they explain again from Facile.it, it is important to carry out this type of operation only when you are connected to the internet from a protected network (your home or mobile line) and never from public networks, because there could be malicious people capable of intercepting the data and stealing it.
4) Take advantage of Strong Authentication (SCA). Check that double identity verification (fingerprint/OTP + password) is active on your account. It is the main protection provided by law.
5) Beware of the “fake payment” scam at the ATM. If you sell an item online and the buyer asks you to go to the ATM to “receive payment immediately”, stop: this is a scam in which they will make you enter codes that will top up their card with your money.