Criminals Target Electronic Banking
Oct. 4, 2004 — -- Once upon a time, banking security invoked strong vaults and good safety-deposit boxes. But in the information age, that has changed.
Today, criminals armed with sophisticated technological schemes are finding new ways to steal electronically from banks and their surprised customers. Indeed, with banking transactions becoming ever more decentralized — moving from the teller's window to home or office computers and freestanding ATMs — thieves have more potential targets from which to choose. Often, that means schemes intended to prey on unsuspecting customers.
"Crooks go where security is weakest, by trial and error," said Gail Hillebrand, a senior attorney at the Consumers' Union, the nonprofit group that publishes Consumer Reports.
In the age of networked computers, that means bank security is increasingly a matter of battening down the electronic hatches — and keeping customers informed about the latest criminal trends.
The good news for consumers, though, is that a healthy dose of common sense caution can prevent many potential crimes from ever occurring. This is especially applicable to two areas of modern banking: So-called phishing scams, which take advantage of the popularity of online banking, and schemes using rigged ATMs to obtain bank card information.
"Phishing," or "spoofing," is one of the most rapidly growing forms of banking fraud. To indicate the nature of these schemes, the Identity Theft Resource Center, a nonprofit group in San Diego, calls these ploys "account verification scams."
In these cases, a person is sent an unsolicited, official-looking e-mail, purportedly from a financial institution or other business, asking the customer to verify account information via an online form. The request is often accompanied by a warning that the customer's account will be closed if no reply is received.
In reality, however, consumers are sending their data to tricksters who have set up authentic-looking Web forms and are trying to obtain consumers' account information to siphon money from their holdings.
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