How safe is cellphone banking?
The short answer is “very safe” — provided you, the customer, are responsible enough to follow all safeguards.
It may seem obvious that you should safeguard your cellphone banking PIN and not store it on your cellphone, but some people do this for the sake of convenience. Don’t! You should also select a new PIN regularly.
We all know about phishing, but “smishing” is another scam whereby fraud convicts forward random SMSes and wait for a response from an unsuspecting bank client. Because we are not as used to SMS spam as we are to email spam, we sometimes consider an SMS to be legitimate.
Obviously, giving out information via SMS is a bad idea – call your bank’s helpline or fraud team if you think you have been targeted.
Similarly, you should ignore phishing emails, and never access your account via a link or saved page. Always type in your bank’s website in full if you would like to transact.
Finally, be wary of SIM swaps offered by a network operator. This allows customers to use their original cellphone number should their SIM get lost. Make sure that a SIM swap has not been done on your number — if it has, ensure that the number is blocked on the bank’s system.
According to FNB, if the customer has followed the necessary security checks and notified FNB of a security breach, the bank offers a full money-back guarantee. But it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
How safe is cellphone banking? << Comments and views
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