Unfortunately, personal data breaches happen regularly. Personal data attract scammers who are constantly coming up with new ways to use data for profit.
The material describes how to protect personal information and not to become a victim of scammers.
The source of information is a training site Fingramota.kz, implemented by the Financial Services Consumer Rights Protection Department of the Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan for Financial Market Regulation and Development order to increase financial literacy of the population.
Thus, personal data that is available in public domain is not enough to seriously harm a person and his/her wallet. However, it helps scammers who use social engineering techniques to mislead a person and try to lure a missing parts of information.
It is widely known that scammers introduce themselves as bank employees in order to get the bank accounts/cards details. In this case, information available on the Internet helps scammers. As when a person calls you by name, knows your date of birth or national ID number, this makes to trust a caller.
It should be reminded that bank employees never call a client without prior actions from the part of a client, so it is better to stop dialogues about confirming or clarifying something right away.
However, scammers can use other methods. If a scammer knows your card number and e-mail, you can get an e-mail stating the following:"The compensation has been sent to your card No.__. Follow the link and enter the code from SMS to get it." By doing it, you will simply open access to your money.
The scammers give various pretenses. But one thing is certain, without your assistance, no scammer will be able to get to your account. According to statistics, more than 95% of all bank card scams occur when users, being under psychological pressure, disclose missing information to attackers: SMS codes, CVV codes and card expiration date, code word and passwords from a personal account. Thus, people lose their savings due to their own trustfulness, and not because their accounts were under attack by hackers.
Remember, if a client has provided secret information to scammers or third parties transfer money to other people's accounts with his/her assistance, banks will not compensate for losses.
It is unlikely that you will be able to protect your data by 100%, but you can still reduce the probability of a successful attack. To do this, just follow the following guidelines:
And remember that alertness is the best protection against scammers!
Sometimes scammers manage to get personal data by hacking, for example, trading companies, service centers, even hotels and carriers. Their web-resources are protected much worse than bank ones. Moreover, even by hacking a social media account or e-mail, it is possible to learn a lot about both a person and his/her acquaintances.
Some consumers enter their data, phone numbers and card details on the pages of fake contests, lotteries and surveys or on the websites of financial organizations, stores and other companies.
Scammers can use a specialized software to forge documents and simulate various notifications. If your information somehow got into the hands of scammers, they can make a fake letter, for example, from a tax authority or prosecutor's office, send it to you by e-mail or via messengers and afterwards a scammer will personally call, threaten, blackmail and offer to "negotiate in an amicable way". For example, you will need to transfer a certain sum to an electronic wallet to stop the case from being filed further.
Transfer of money to scammers will not help you get rid of a fine, even if there is one in reality. Sometimes scammers find out that a person has a debt, lure that money from a person and then disappear. In this case, neither a fine or debt will be lifted.