Bank telephone scam warning

Yesterday someone called on our landline claiming to be from the fraud department of my husband’s bank.  When I said that my husband wasn’t available to come to the phone the caller (Martin) said that it was urgent that he speak to him as there had been attempted fraudulent transaction on his account, that the bank had send my husband a text message about it and my husband needed to read Martin the PIN in the message to confirm his identity.

Alarm bells rang so I asked for a number to call him back on, hung up and looked up the number of the fraud reporting service at my husband’s bank. The person I spoke to there went through about five minutes of ID checks with my husband before we could even discuss the matter.  Then we found out how the scam operates.

The scammers harvest credit card details from poorly secured sites then try to add them to a digital wallet (like Google wallet).  This generates a PiN which is sent to the card owners mobile.  The scammer then calls and says they need the PIN to confirm ID.  They of course simply enter the PIN and the credit card becomes live in their digital wallet.

Luckily no transactions had been attempted and the credit card has been cancelled and will need to be reissued.  We did get a few tips from the very helpful man in the genuine bank fraud reporting service.

- Never give a PIN in a text message to anyone.  The bank will NEVER ask for it.

- Ask for a number to ring back and then either check that it’s the same number on the back of your card or check it on your bank website.  Don’t Google it!  The scammers are sophisticated enough to make sure the number comes back looking like a genuine fraud reporting service.

The man at the genuine fraud reporting service said this particular scam has been on the rise over the last few weeks so take care.