It will be noted that the continous email interswitch sc.am is still going around and it is until recently that the company put up an alert on its website after many people had been sca..mmed by these emails.
Interswitch should go a step further and carry out a mass campaign to encourage Electronic money and deter these fraudSTARS.Their refusal to do this is based on avoiding mass hysteria over the safety of ATM usage.
Apart from the scourge of armed robbers at Remote ATMS other issues still abound .Many banks have refused to refund customers whose Bank Cards have been cloned by criminals and used .These deposits abraod are usually covered by insurance companies and this is essential for ATM usage to continue .
Our Advice is Avoid The ATM during this period if you can do without it .
The Article below is Adapted fron Sunday Tribune by Akin Osunlaja 9jabook IT Correspondent .
The current upsurge and nefarious activities of Automated Teller Machine (ATM) fraudsters is threatening electronic payment system in the nation’s banking sector with users threatening massive dumping of the cards if the unwholesome act is not checked.
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A comprehensive investigations carried out by Sunday Tribune across the country revealed that two of every five ATM card users lately, have become victims of one form of fraud or the other and ironically the sector’s regulator, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), service provider, Interswitch, law enforcement agents and banks are helpless as they have not been able to proffer any solution.
Only recently, the CBN admitted that hundreds of millions of naira was lost to ATM-related theft last year alone. Every week, hundreds of bank customers across major cities are finding their deposits or a substantial part of it stolen by faceless crooks.
The Special Fraud Unit (SFU) also confirmed recently that ATM fraud is on the increase in Nigeria.
Findings by Sunday Tribune showed that the activities of the fraudsters cut across all the banks having ATM facilities. Consequently, a cross section of the users told Sunday Tribune that the technology should be scrapped if the activities of the scammers cannot be curtailed.
In most of the banks visited, security men that were supposed to watch out for criminals coming into the banking halls now take affected ATM victims through complaints procedures. The queues seen in banks nowadays are that of ATM complainants and in most cases, the issues are never resolved.
The list of affected victims is endless. Mr. Christian Obed, a media practitioner was cash trapped in midst of an assignment and had to rushed to a nearby branch of the bank where his account is domiciled to make withdrawal via the Automated Teller Machine (ATM). To his consternation, his account read zero balance. Further enquiries from the counter did not prove otherwise. He was faced with reality that his hard earned life savings of N154, 000 had gone with the wind courtesy yet to be identified fraudsters.
On her part, a woman who simply gave her name as Mrs Ngozi was caught weeping profusely in front of a bank on Allen Avenue, Ikeja told Sunday Tribune that she had come to make withdrawal at the ATM to send to her daughter in the university who had sent a distress call, but to her surprise, her account had been emptied. Efforts to get the bank officials to answer her had proved abortive.
It is not all about duping, the issues ranged from cards trapped inside the machine to PIN rejection.
It is all tales of woes from duped Nigerians. Many had lost their entire savings to hackers. These fraudulent activities which started like a play has assumed a dangerous dimension, threatening the entire e-payment system in the banking industry and the attendant benefits to the economy.
The ATM technology which was introduced barely three years ago has been beneficial to users until the latest developments. Customers now have access to their accounts at all times. It was indeed one of the key benefits of consolidation in the banking sector.
Ironically, it has been a game of buck passing and blame shifting. The customers are saying the act cannot be perpetrated without the connivance of bank officials, while bankers are maintaining that until a customer mortgages his or her Personal Identification Number (PIN), the act cannot be perpetrated.
Apart from siphoning money from accounts, Sunday Tribune discovered that the criminals in some cases alter the normal transaction processes such as crediting the wrong figure and making do with the balance from the difference between the original payment and the exaggerated one. This is said to be common among bank staff. Another way is through stolen ATM card. The pin would then be changed to siphon the money in it long before the victim could notice and alert his bank.
The fraudsters have also taken the war to internet. They open websites where they tell unsuspecting card users to disclose their PIN cards. In one e-mail, the fraudsters wrote: “”Currently INTERSWITCH is updating our ATM/CASH CARD machine database for all the cards to be in a more secured web so that if it is mistakenly stolen, the criminals will not be able to use it to make purchases in the websites which have been the major way of utilizing the cards they steal.
According to the Group Managing Director of Skye Bank, Mr. Akinsola Akinfemiwa, the only way fraudster could defraud a customer is when the Personal Identification Number (PIN) is compromised.
According to him, a customer ought to protect the PIN from easy access, stressing that the advantages of the card was quite enormous.
“My advice is that users of ATM should protect their PIN from easy access. The Nigerian rich man syndrome of sending drivers or house helps to withdraw money from the ATM is not the best. Once, the PIN is disclosed, it provides for easy access for fraudsters to perpetrate their acts,” he said.
Speaking in the same light, the Group Managing Director, Wema Bank, Mr. Segun Oloketuyi, noted that the first major step is for the users to take precaution on who has access to their PIN, stressing that once the PIN is disclosed, fraud is inevitable.
Mr. Mitchelle Elegbe, Managing Director of Interswitch refused to comment on the latest developments. But a source close to the company told Sunday Tribune that they were doing all that is possible to forestall the activities of fraudsters.
A school teacher, Mr. Sumbo Adefarasin noted that the genesis should be traced to Nigerians abroad, stating that those who were involved in credit scam abroad are the ones plying their trade in the country presently.
An ex-banker also attributed the proliferation of the cards responsible, stating that some banks made it compulsory for customers withdrawing less than N60, 000 to use the ATM channel.
On his part, Mr. Roland Obe, Intercontinental Bank’s Group Executive (Card Services), said it is important to view ATM fraud cases from several perspectives, adding that prior to April this year what Nigerian banks were issuing were magnetic stripe cards, called magstripe card which could easily be cloned.
He noted that the card is susceptible to cloning because all information are copied on a black stripe at the back of the card and this loophole is what fraudsters have capitalize to defraud innocent, greedy, ignorant Nigerians, stressing that no fraudster can use the cloned card without the PIN of the authentic cardholder.
“So, what they do now is to on a daily basis send different types of text messages informing the cardholder that he or she has won one prize from one MTN or Glo Promo and before you can claim your prize you need to provide your ATM card number and PIN number, the gullible will supply this information the fraudster quickly use it to clone a new card with which he takes control of the account and being to make withdrawals from the account linked to that PIN and card,” he said.
Obe further explained that the new card that is called Verve card, is compliant with a set of standards and compliances that a typical financial institution that is issuing and acquiring electronic payment transactions must adapt its operating system, for the financial institution to be able to secure its cardholders and payment systems.
He called on the Economic and Financial Crimes’ Commission (EFCC) to set up a department that takes care of cyber financial crimes, adding that it is important to have a regulation that guides registration of websites in the country.
“There is no absolute solution to ATM fraud but it can be minimised, the reason is simply because both work with PIN number, once you compromise your PIN in anyway knowingly or unknowingly the account has lost its security component. It’s like your normal cheque book once somebody else can sign your signature your account has lost a very important aspect of its security.
What do you do? You change it, at the slightest evidence of compromise of your PIN just change it or else the fraudster may change it before you have the opportunity to report and change it, that is why it is very important that you guard you PIN number like your life. Never use your birth date as your PIN number it’s very easy to hack your account when you use your birth date as your PIN,” he advised.
Other dos and donts :
NEVER GET AN ATM CARD IF YOU DONT NEED IT AND IF YOU NEED IT MAKE SURE YOU GET IT FROM THE RIGHT BANK !
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