“Your bank account has been blocked”: why is impersonating banks the favorite modality of cyberfraudsters?

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Why do cybercriminals prefer to impersonate banks?

“Cybercriminals prefer to use the ‘communication from a bank’ scam because it gives them an appearance of authority and legitimacy that can trick people into revealing sensitive personal or financial information.”

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“It is important to review what information is published online. It is recommended not to upload too much personal information, such as full names, ID, passport, licenses, cell phones, etc. With this public information, a criminal can not only impersonate a bank operator , if not even by a relative or another person”

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What should a person who has been a victim of this form of cyber-scam do?

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What should we do to prevent being victims of this type of cyber-scam?

• Make sure that the web address visited is the correct one and not a false version.
• Verify if the website has a valid security certificate, and that it is signed by the company it claims to be.
• Avoid providing personal or financial information if you are not sure that the website is legitimate.
• Do not click on links or download attachments from emails, messages from social networks, instant messages such as WhatsApp or Telegram, or from suspicious texts or from unknown senders.
• Use security software to protect your computer against malware and other threats.

• Check bank websites for payment deadlines. It is important that each user knows their basic banking information well to prevent other people from taking advantage of it. Some cybercriminals can extract information from users by hinting that they have a payment due.
• Check spelling and grammatical mistakes. You should check the entire message and also that the bank link is well written. For example: “Banco strella” or “Banco internacional4l” would not be well written.
• The bank will never call or send messages or emails requesting information, such as personal data or passwords. These kinds of requests are only made if you need to make modifications or requests. If a bank calls you asking you to confirm your personal information, it is better not to respond.
• It is recommended that when using web banking, the full address of the bank is written in the search engine. In other words, do not search for “Banco Estrella”, as a list of pages with this name could appear, but they are not necessarily the real ones, no matter how it seems.