European Banks and Police Warn Consumers of Cyber Scams

Europol and European Banking Federation have recently launched a campaign which is designed to promote the public awareness of the growing incidents of financial fraud and data theft, as a part of European Cyber Security Month (ECMS).

From the coming week the law enforcers from the 28 EU member states which includes Colombia, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland and Ukraine who will be joining forces with the 24 national banking associations and others to warn consumers not to fall for the cyber scams.

This campaign will mainly focus on the seventh most common online financial scams which includes the followings: CEO Fraud, Invoice Fraud, Phishing and its variants, spoofed bank websites, romance scams, personal data theft via social media and investment and online shopping scams.

Most of these malicious attacks include the social engineering techniques to trick the victims into handling over their personal and financial details, or paying or transferring funds to a malicious third party.

The dedicated site which explains completely the tell-tale signs of these types of scams that are performed on victims, and what consumers can do to avoid these scams.

Many of these victims which are fallen under what’s known as the authorized push payment (APP) fraud: this is where the scammer tricks the victim into making payments to an account which his controlled by them.

According to the UK’s Payment Regulator (PSR) there were around 43,875 reported cases of APP scams from the last year, and 88% of which the victims were consumers who lost an average of £2784.

The UK regulator is working on an industry code of practice, which ought to clarify the matters, as well as the initiative such as the stricter checks on the identity of those who are opening the bank accounts; by confirmation of payee, so that the consumers will have to verify that they are paying the person they want; and it can improved the data sharing so the banks can respond more quickly to scams.

Banking lobby group UK Finance controversially argued last week that a new levy on each of the payment made in the country could help provide the funds to compensate the victims of APP fraud.