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Spoofing scams are increasing at an alarming rate.
Spoofing scams are on the rise
According to UK Finance, the TSB recently warned consumers to demand money as spoofing from banks and organizations spoofed and spoofing cases surged 300% last year.
In my experience, this type of scam is devastating to vulnerable customers. It is often impossible to get back the money sent.
Banks are customers from these types of scams, as the average victim has lost 4,000 from scammers impersonating brands such as Royal Mail, Amazon, and BT, and consumers are already feeling a pinch due to rising living costs. Can we do more to protect ourselves?
Spoofing scams are a common type of permitted push payment (APP) scam. In these scams, scammers often contact victims by phone, text, or email, pretending to be from well-known organizations such as banks, utilities, and government agencies such as HMRC. Fraudsters claim that their customers’ bank accounts have been compromised and are using social engineering tactics to encourage them to transfer money to another bank controlled by the fraudster.
Social engineering is a form of psychological manipulation used by fraudsters to attempt to obtain personal information. Fraudsters put pressure on people, provoke emotional reactions, and try to convince them to gladly hand over their details.
Fraudsters often already know basic information about the person they are targeting, such as their name or bank partner. In short, it’s easy to convince customers that they are genuine and deceive victims from money.
Fraudsters can use the information they obtain to bypass knowledge-based security checks in bank call centers and access financial information without the customer having to send money in advance.
Criminals are experts who pretend to be non-self, and even the most savvy people can be fooled. If measures are not in place to protect customers, they can lose their trust and endanger the reputation of their victims.
It is the bank’s responsibility to take a proactive approach to protect customers and prevent spoofing and other APP scams, as this can ultimately lead to business losses. There are three ways to protect your customers.
1. Use pop-up alerts to encourage you to pause your thoughts
With our fast payment system, you can easily send money anywhere in the world with just a few clicks or taps. This is very convenient, but in my experience, you can make payments in just a few seconds, so your customers run the risk of being forced to make quick decisions. This works in favor of scammers.
Fraud alerts and interventions in both online and mobile apps can help create moments of remorse and give customers time to think before sending large sums of money. Ultimately, pop-up alerts add friction to the payment process, slowing down customers and encouraging them to rethink their anomalous demands.
2. Provide advice and share educational assets
When it comes to fraud prevention, it’s very effective to provide information, advice, and educate customers on how to avoid being a victim of spoofing fraud.
Be careful of your customers to never reveal security details over the phone. everytime Be careful when rechecking your bank’s contact information and sending money to someone you have never met in person.
APP scams are common, but providing customers with tools to recognize and avoid them is one of the best ways to mitigate that risk.
3. Use technology to prevent fraud at its source
Perhaps the most effective way for banks to combat spoofing scams is to prevent fraudsters from getting the information they need to commit these scams in the first place. And one of the most common places they do is via a call center.
Fraudsters often use bank call centers to obtain sensitive information about the target and later use it to convince the victim that it is legitimate. They use bots to navigate interactive voice recognition (IVR) systems and social engineering tactics to extract security information from call center agents.
Some of these techniques play recordings of crying babies in the background, yell on the phone, abuse call center agents in an attempt to stress them, and force them to provide sensitive information.
Thankfully, technology helps. With the right tools, you can address these vulnerabilities and identify high-risk calls that enter the call center before answering the call. This allows bank fraud teams to quickly find and resolve threats long before funds are stolen.
With the right combination of education, training and technology, you can stick to scammers and prevent spoofing scams from harming your customers. You can stop these scams at their source by blocking scammers from breaking into your call center and getting information.
APP scams won’t go away anytime soon. However, you can keep your customers safe by raising awareness, educating them, and protecting your call center.
