How to drive bank fraud­sters absolutely insane

Cyber crim­i­nals are con­tin­u­ally coming up with new methods to get their hands on their vic­tims’ money. In the light of this, here’s a rec­om­mended video which uses a large dose of humour to call atten­tion to a cur­rent threat.

Despite the enter­taining tone of this video, it addresses a rather cur­rent method employed by cyber-crim­i­nals – but see for your­self: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_5eQw-kdyM

You can pro­tect your­self against the risks involved in entering a finan­cial institution’s address into a Google search window to access your e-banking portal with the fol­lowing measures:

• Always enter the address man­u­ally and directly into your browser address line – not into the Google search window!
• Never type “my bank log-in” or “e-banking my bank” or sim­ilar into the Google search window. Google shows you adverts (even those of fraud­sters!) before dis­playing actual search results. Never click on any such ads in case they men­tion your finan­cial institution.
• Make sure you are using a secure con­nec­tion (with a lock symbol, the cor­rect finan­cial institution’s name and the cor­rect domain name).

Also men­tioned in this video clip is remote sup­port. This involves a tech­nology to obtain third-party assis­tance for your own device without the need for an engi­neer to attend on-site. Finan­cial insti­tu­tions also use this to pro­vide their sup­port or helpdesk facil­i­ties. Please make sure to take the fol­lowing mea­sures when using this technology:

• Don’t call any sup­port or helpdesk num­bers which are dis­played to you in Google ads.
• Only estab­lish con­nec­tions with trust­worthy people. You should be par­tic­u­larly cau­tious if it is not you ini­ti­ating the connection.
• Make sure you are using a secure con­nec­tion (with a lock symbol, the cor­rect finan­cial institution’s name and the cor­rect domain name).
• Don’t grant full access to your system. The person helping you should only ever be able to view your screen passively.
• Take into account that every­thing shown on your screen can be seen and also recorded by the other side.
• Don’t surf to any Internet pages which have nothing to do with the ses­sion – even if you are asked to do so.
• Make sure that the remote sup­port con­nec­tion is ter­mi­nated after availing your­self of any help, to stop any fur­ther access to your device.