The Latest About Bank Transfer Scams

Oct. 7, 2019 - PRLog -- In recent times, bank transfer fraud has been becoming more and more common. This happens when fraudsters imitate trustworthy organisations such as banks and attempt to entice people into moving money out of their accounts.

This fraud often starts with a call or a text stating that a bank account has been compromised. These messages concerned often contain links directing people to imitation websites which ask users to log in to their online banking, thus allowing scammers to access the account and steal money. Callers also often ask account holders to transfer money to another account to 'increase security'. In this case it is victims themselves who transfer the money out of their own account and into the hands of the scammer.

For people who transfer the money themselves, this counts as an authorised payment, which means that their losses are not legally protected. Some banks and building societies, however, have signed up to a voluntary code which means that they pledge to reimburse victims of this type of fraud if they fulfil certain criteria.

One protective measure which comes into force next year is name checking for online bank transfers. This should reduce cases of this fraud, given that victims are often fooled into thinking that the payee account is in their name. This would mean that these transfers could not happen as easily as previously.

Given the importance of this issue, tellows, https://www.tellows.co.uk/, a platform for users to share unknown callers' information and for reverse phone number search, has published a blog post on the topic, which you can find here: https://blog.tellows.co.uk/2019/10/the-bank-transfer-scam/