SIM swop fraud rises by 104%

schumi

schumi

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Cape Town - There has been a massive increase in cyber-related crimes specifically targeting online and mobile banking apps, warns IRS Forensic Investigations.


Other such crimes include phishing, malware, and SIM swops.


“The SA Banking Risk Information Centre (Sabric) reported that South Africa lost a quarter of a billion rand through these type of banking app frauds in 2017.


“What is really concerning, however, is that Sabric reported an increase of over 100% in the following year’s study from January to August 2018 in respect of SIM swop fraud in particular,” said IRS director Chad Thomas.


SIM swop incidents doubled from 4040 from January to August 2017 to 8254 over the same period the following year.

This is a 104% increase according to Sabric statistics.

National police commissioner General Khehla Sitole said at the release of the 2017-2018 financial year crime stats, cybercrime would be added to crime statistics this year.

He said the police were gathering more expertise and knowledge about cybercrime, and travelled to China and Thailand to learn more about it.

“The cybercrime strategy is at an advanced stage,” said Sitole.

Brigadier Vishnu Naidoo confirmed to the Weekend Argus that the police were developing the cybercrime strategy and it would be integrated into their Organised Threat Analysis strategy. In 2017, Sabric said there were 13438 incidents across banking apps, online banking, and mobile banking which cost the industry more than R250million in gross losses.

While incidents from January to August last year showed a 64% increase, this is compared to the same period in 2017.

Mobile banking incidents showed an increase of more than 100%, with gross losses of R23593631 and online banking incidents showed an increase of 44% with gross losses of R89368722.

Banking app incidents increased by 20%, with gross losses of R70156364.
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More at: https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/western-cape/sim-swop-fraud-rises-by-104-18694770
 
This has really, really become unacceptable.

I haven't actually seen a banking app that allows users to immediately freeze their account in case of suspected fraud, unless I missed that.

It would be nice to be able to do that.
 
Dups! said:
This has really, really become unacceptable.

I haven't actually seen a banking app that allows users to immediately freeze their account in case of suspected fraud, unless I missed that.

It would be nice to be able to do that.
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Well, every transaction pops up on my phone as a notification and the notification includes a one click report fraud option.

My brothers card was recently cloned, they blocked the transaction and called him to check. This on an easy account for about R6 a month.

Most bank fraud is usually people giving away account details or card/account details comprimised. Better AI in terms of fraud detection will hopefully help with that.

Actually the best way of stealing someone's money is probably to go buy a huge amount of groceries at the place the card holder frequents, bank won't suspect and the card holder will probably not check the timestamp.
 
That is the thing, you can only flag that particular transaction or transactions.

I would love to freeze the whole account or accounts in case of a credit card account being compromised as well.
 
Dups! said:
That is the thing, you can only flag that particular transaction or transactions.

I would love to freeze the whole account or accounts in case of a credit card account being compromised as well.
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If they have access to your SIM (SIM swap) and bank account login credentials, they can just unfreeze it?

Or do you mean you'll freeze it when you realise your cellphone connection doesn't work (which could be for a number of reasons) and have to go to bank branch to unfreeze it?
 
supersunbird said:
If they have access to your SIM (SIM swap) and bank account login credentials, they can just unfreeze it?

Or do you mean you'll freeze it when you realise your cellphone connection doesn't work (which could be for a number of reasons) and have to go to bank branch to unfreeze it?
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The option should be that once it is "frozen" then you (as the account holder) have to go into the bank to "unfreeze" it. It would negate them "unfreezing" it even if they have the credentials.
 
Dups! said:
The option should be that once it is "frozen" then you (as the account holder) have to go into the bank to "unfreeze" it. It would negate them "unfreezing" it even if they have the credentials.
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So you still have to wait to realise your number has been SIM swapped, so still gives a time gap. It's easier to just use a bank that doesn't rely on SIM related OTPs.
 
supersunbird said:
So you still have to wait to realise your number has been SIM swapped, so still gives a time gap. It's easier to just use a bank that doesn't rely on SIM related OTPs.
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There's only one bank that has that, and that's Capitec..
 
Dups! said:
The money in your cheque account is the bank's money?
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I would like to believe that you wouldn't ignore the credit card account in a suspected fraud instance over the cheque account, despite the fact that it is technically the bank's money.
 
supersunbird said:
So you still have to wait to realise your number has been SIM swapped, so still gives a time gap. It's easier to just use a bank that doesn't rely on SIM related OTPs.
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Yes, as far as I know an illegal sim swop should not affect account holders of banks not using sim card based OTPs, as the attempted transaction cannot be authorized without physical access to the handset that was linked to the account.

Is this not accurate?

How many banks are still using the old method for the percentage to have increased like that?
 
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