An interesting article on the My Broadband website dealt with how people steal from the banking accounts of others.  Most of the time this unfortunately involves SIM swaps.  They normally steal the information by a phishing attack, which occurs when you receive one of those e-mails telling you that you’ve got a refund, or that your banking details have changed.  It is no wonder that people fall foul to such tricks, because one is simply bombarded with those e-mails – I must get probably two a day, at least and that is excluding all the millions that somebody wants to put into my account because I was named in somebody’s will and the easier to spot scams!

Things are made worse when one’s bank says that they will never send you communication via e-mail, they don’t ever send you anything that you have to fill in – and then they do!  For example, Nedbank recently sent me an e-mail saying that if I use my firm’s Nedbank credit card machine during the month of November we will be able to claim our share of R1 million and they sent me e-mails asking me to register to take part in that process.  It is exactly e-mails like that, which the bank has confirmed is genuine, which cause the confusion.  The banks are using e-mails to communicate with people, as I guess one would expect in this day and age, and they are using e-mails to ask you to fill in forms to register for things, so now it becomes a question of spotting the difference between a real registration and a fake registration.  I guess it all boils down to simply not filling in any forms, for anybody involving your banking and personal details.  I am not talking about online purchases with credit cards – something I have done for years and without any problems – I am talking specifically about filling in your banking account details to allegedly win your share of a prize or get a refund from SARS or someone else!