For a long time, companies were the targets. From now on, cybercriminals no longer hesitate to target individuals with transfer fraud or false bank details. Here is the procedure and advice to avoid the trap.
You have an unread message. By consulting your emails, you notice, indeed, that your plumber sent you a billing reminder, for his intervention of the past week. He attached a bank statement of his name to the shipment. All you have to do is make the transfer to him.
A few days after the payment, you receive a new email from your plumber, who informs you that his email address has been hacked. The previous message was, in fact, sent by the scammer, who managed to take control of the messaging system. He took the opportunity to check the invoices pending payment, modify them for his benefit and send reminders. Obviously, the attached RIB was a fakeactually pointing to an account controlled by the scammer.
A transfer to an unknown account
This is what a transfer fraud or false RIB. There are obviously many variations. The creditor whose identity is usurped can be a craftsman, but also a lessor, a notary, a supplier of goods or services… The pirate messaging can also be yours. The result is the same: you have been amen make a transfer to an unknown account, and there is little chance that you will get your money back. The transfer, in fact, has the particularity of being irrevocable: once you have validated it, you cannot go back, except react very quickly.
How to cancel a transfer made by mistake?
More and more individual victims
RIB fraud is not new. But until now, it was a phenomenon mainly observed among professional audiences, note cybermalveillance.gouv.fr, in its 2022 annual report published yesterday, Thursday March 23. This is no longer the case: Since 2022, it also affects many individualscontinues this public interest group, responsible in particular for informing and assisting victims of scams on the internet.
The proof: in 2022, the cybermalveillance.gouv.fr article explaining how to deal with this threat was consulted 41,000 times, a figure up 37% on the previous year.
Logic: the implementation of strong authentication devices to secure remote payments, in particular by bank card, complicates the life of organizations that live from online scams. They are therefore tempted to test new operating modes, increasingly sophisticated. In short, be on your guard:
- Do not send money before having contacted the creditor by telephone to verify the authenticity of the invoice and bank details;
- Beware of bill reminders that present themselves as urgent;
- Do not click on suspicious links or attachments in these unsolicited emails;
- Immediately report any suspicious incident to your bank.
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