5 SECURED WAYS TO PREVENT INTERNET BANKING FRAUD

Internet banking, also known as Online banking is an online platform for banking transactions where by customer's can carry out most of their basic banking transactions without visiting the banking hall.

Just by login on to the bank's website, customer can access the online

platform and initiate their banking transactions.

Transactions such as Fund transfers, Bill payments, Debit card request,

Airtime purchase, Hotels booking, Tax payment, Loans, investment and so much

more.

Some bank enables up to 5 million naira transfers from their online platform,

some, 10 million naira depending on the type of account the customer operates

with the bank.

Online banking has made life easy for so many customer's but has also put tears

in some customer's eyes. You login to the platform using a unique username

and password or a unique pin for security reasons, there is also some other

security measures that banks have put in place to reduce risk of an account being

defrauded.

Despite all these security measures, our smart brothers(fraudsters) still

infiltrate customers account and defraud them of millions. Lets look at 5

secured ways of preventing Internet Banking fraud on our accounts.

1. Login Password should be changed once or twice a month: Gaining access to

the platform requires a login, user id and password or pin/token depending on the bank. Customer should endeavor to always change their password or pin like

twice a month(recommended), unlike some security measures especially for system access for some companies that passwords expires after every 15 - 30 days,

the password for the online banking does not expire except you change it.

Fraudster Tricks: Before a fraudster defrauds a customer, they take their time

to study and monitor that particular customer to get information on their

login details, they get the customer's user id first by sending the customer a
Phishing mail, before getting the password. Changing password goes a long way to twat their plans.

2. Updated mobile number and email address should be updated with the bank:

This is very important as customer gets notification in their email or mobile number once they login or carry out a transaction from the platform. Some customers change their mobile number and forget to update it with their bank and when they initiate transactions, they wont get notified for it.

Fraudster Tricks: They first of all change the mobile number on the customer's

account, then they request for the account balance using the USSD platform.

With this they know how much the customer has on that particular account.

So, always update your mobile number and email with your bank and alert your

bank when ever you stop getting transaction notification.

3. Get a Token device: A token is a small electronic device that generates transaction codes, it can generate different codes at different times, each code has a 6 digit number which is used to complete transactions. Some banks

provide the option for customer to choose between PIN or Token for their transactions, for the PIN, customer creates a 6 digit PIN for themselves.

Both the PIN and Token device are used to complete transaction. The difference between both is that the Token is a physical device while PIN is a set of numbers that the customer generates themselves and is meant to be memorized.

Fraudster Tricks: For most banks, the last security measure before initiating

a transaction is inserting the code generated from the Token or the PIN. So

once a fraudster knows a customer's PIN, defrauding that customer wont be

difficult for them. having a Token device is safer because it is a device that

stays with the customer and you cant predict which number the device will

generate for a particular transaction unlike PIN that you can luckily guess,

for instance, most people use their date of birth/anniversaries as their PIN.

4. Don't bookmark or save your login page with your password: Most times, for easy access, we tend to bookmark our login page, at times we even allow the browser to save our password. This is very risky because whoever logs in to that computer will have access to the customer's bank account and can initiate

transactions.

Fraudster Tricks: This point 4 is a no brainier, once a fraudster gets into a system that has bookmarked their login page or saved the password, then the rest is history. Fraudsters could be anybody, friends, family members, mates, colleagues etc.

5. Finally, DO NOT ACCESS THE ONLINE PLATFORM VIA A LINK:

Notice the emphasis on this? Let me go straight to fraudster tricks on this, they send customers an online banking link stating that their account is blocked or their Debit Card is deactivated or their BVN is not correct and if customer wants to update or correct this error that the customer should click on the link which will redirect the customer to the Online banking page.