If you receive a call from your bank advisor, take your precautions. It could be a usurper. Indeed, for the past few months, a technique has been plaguing these hackers: pretending to be your adviser to extract money from you. This is the umpteenth phishing strategy of scammers. As a reminder, phishing, also called “phishing”, consists of impersonating a recognized organization in the hope of stealing from you.
Thus, you can receive SMS, phone calls or emails that invite you to respond or redirect you to a link. According to the National Printing Office (IN Groupe) observatory, 210,000 French people are affected by digital identity theft each year. Impersonating a large institution allows these hackers to convince you of the veracity of the request.
Added to this figure is INSEE data on phishing. Between 2018 and 2019, 49.5% of people say they have been victims of or exposed to these techniques in France. Even more, 47.7% of them suffered these frauds more than three times. Over this same period, 71.8% reported to institutions tracking these identity thefts. These scams can therefore also affect you and concern a majority of French people. To avoid them, you need to understand how they work.
Many organizations find themselves usurped in this way. Among the most affected are telephone operators, delivery companies and banks. These have been the subject of numerous reports in recent months. In 2023, 11,000 requests for assistance were recorded by cybermalveillance.gouv. This site is a support platform for all victims of cybercrime. So how do these scammers operate? How do you tell your bank advisor from a hacker?
Impersonating your bank? Nothing could be simpler for these scam professionals. Indeed, an article from Le Parisien reveals the testimony of a couple in their thirties who were victims of this type of scam that has been in vogue lately. The hacker’s strategy is simple. He calls you on the phone, posing as a member of your banking department. In the case of this couple, it was a member of the security department of their bank.
Once his presentation has been made, he discusses with you a suspicion of a false transaction. It then presents you with payments that would have been made on your account and tells you that it has blocked them. Then, it asks you to validate these famous expenses for the proper functioning of their cancellations. He then ends up asking you to transfer your savings to another account for your safety. The trap is launched and then just closes on you. But, how did this couple get away with it? What to do to get your money back?
The couple interviewed by Le Parisien lost nearly 8,200 euros. But the latter did not intend to let their pirate take advantage of this stolen money. “We had doubts, we called our bank adviser immediately after hanging up,” they say. Their real adviser was therefore able to confirm to them that they had just been victims of a scam. Thanks to this reflex of the two spouses, the bank was able to block part of the transaction.
However, this is not enough for the thirties who wish to recover the full amount stolen. Thus, after filing a pre-complaint, they then conduct their own investigation. “Luckily, we could see the RIB to which our money was transferred. I did some research to realize that thanks to the BIC number (next to the IBAN), we could find the bank identifier “.
From this moment, the couple can trace their money. An account has been opened in Rouen, and the partner knowing a person who works there, asks to add “the thief’s bank details in his beneficiaries”. The criminal is then identified. The two executives went to the police station to file a complaint and expose the elements found.
Nevertheless, their bank still refuses to reimburse them considering that they have a share of the responsibility. Nevertheless, this testimony allows you to know the good practices in case of phishing. Never communicate your bank or personal data either by SMS or by telephone. If someone is impersonating your bank advisor, the easiest way to find out for sure is to pay attention to their request. If they ask you to provide confidential information, it is very likely that it is a hacker.
You can also report the fraud to the following number: 0 805 805 817.
