FNB Alerts About Criminals Targeting Digital Wallets

FNB Alerts Digital Wallet Criminals: First National Bank (FNB), South Africa’s oldest bank, has given a warning that criminals are increasingly exploiting digital wallet users through sophisticated phishing attacks.

Phishing and smishing attacks deceives users into providing sensitive information such as login credentials, passwords, PINs, card details, or ID numbers.

FNB Alerts Digital Wallet Criminals

According to FNB, fraudulent activity doesn’t take advantage of any security deficiencies in the cards or wallets themselves.

However, criminals use all sorts of attacks to convince users to provide compromising information.

This information allows the criminal to load physical card details, like the plastic number, expiry date and card verification value (CVV) onto their own digital wallets.

FNB head of card transaction and fraud detection, Christopher Boxall, said, “We’re seeing a rise in attacks that aim to convince users to send through an OTP as part of a fraudulent process.” 

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“Although the wording for online transactions and digital wallet OTPs differs, the user might not notice this OTP will be used to verify the loading of their debit or credit card to a completely separate digital wallet.”

“Once the criminal has loaded this card to their device, they can use their biometrics to verify transactions made from the device.”

FNB Measures Against Digital Wallet Criminals

Tthe South African bank has developed ways to mitigate these criminal activities. According to TechCentral, the bank highlighted these ways in the following steps:

• An authentic OTP SMS for online transactions with FNB will always inform the customer that they are about to make an online purchase of a stipulated amount; include the last four digits of the card; followed by the confirmation OTP number.
• An authentic digital wallet OTP notification from FNB will always warn the customer that they are attempting to link a specific card (indicating the last four digits of the card) to a specific wallet, and it will always inform the customer to call 0870 30 30 30 or log into the FNB app to complete or cancel the action.
• The bank will never require a customer to share their OTP with anyone to impute it anywhere on their behalf.

Conclusion

FNB Alerts Digital Wallet Criminals: The bank warns customers to maintain strict security over their private information. The bank highlighted this decision as the most important decision to prevent cyberattacks. 

Boxall finally said, “The bank also has a sophisticated rules-based model to identify possibly fraudulent activity and prevent suspicious transactions.”

“However, maintaining strict security around one’s personal and private information is the most important action we can take to prevent malicious attacks.

“Any payment technology relies on a certain amount of private information known only to the user. We must remain vigilant, protect this information, and safeguard our digital identities.”