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SIM Swops  

• If reception on your cell phone is lost, immediately check what the problem could be, as you could have been a victim of an illegal SIM swop on your number. If confirmed, notify your bank immediately.
• Inform your Bank should your cell phone number change so that your cell phone notification contact number is updated on its systems.
• Register for your Bank’s app or cell phone notification service and receive electronic messages relating to activities or transactions on your accounts as and when they occur.
• Regularly verify whether the details received from cell phone notifications are correct and according to the recent activity on your account. Should any detail appear suspicious immediately contact your Bank and report all log-on notifications that are unknown to you.
• Memorise your PIN and passwords, never write them down or share them, not even with a bank official.
• Make sure your PIN and passwords cannot be seen when you enter them.
• If you think your PIN and/or password has been compromised, change it immediately either online or at your nearest branch.
• Choose an unusual PIN and password that are hard to guess and change them often.

Change of Bank Details Scam

• Maintain a good relationship with existing suppliers and know your contacts whom you should be able to liaise with.
• Ensure that you confirm any change of banking details with someone you usually deal with at the organisation before making any changes to beneficiary accounts. When calling the organisation to confirm the changes to banking details, use a number from the telephone directory or web search and not the number on the letterhead or email as you will most likely be calling the fraudster.
• If talking to this ‘supplier’ on the telephone beforehand, they may ask about when you last sent payments to them, looking to see if you are still an active client. Again, ask to speak to contacts that you recognise and if necessary ask your contact to call you back.
• Question whether well-known companies would change their banking details without notifying people through more formal channels.
• Beware of supposed confirmatory emails from almost identical email addresses, such as .com instead of .co.za, or addresses that differ from the genuine one by perhaps one letter that can be easily missed.
• Instruct staff responsible for paying invoices to scrutinise invoices for irregularities and escalating suspicions to a known contact.
• It is essential to make sure that you are certain of the identity of the person your business is dealing with at all times. Consider setting up designated ‘Single Points of Contact’ with companies to which you make regular payments.
• Ensure that your company’s private information is not disclosed to third parties who are not entitled to receive it, or third parties whose identities cannot be rightfully verified.
• Rather shred your business and suppliers’ invoices or any communication material that may contain letterheads, than to discard in rubbish bins.
• Consider reviewing previous requests to change account details to confirm whether they were genuine or not.
• To avoid your customers acting on an instruction allegedly from you, alert them to this type of fraud

Email Hacking

• Make sure your PC has the most up-to-date OS updates and antivirus/malware software.
• Depending on the extent to which your account was abused, you may have to contact all email recipients who were spammed by your hacked mailbox to advise them that these communications were not legitimate.
• Set up several email addresses. Use your original email address for personal or business communication as you’d normally do and use an alternative email address to communicate with your service provider, since many now ask for a different address for added protection. Then, use yet another email address for registering for websites, newsletters, online shopping and other services. In this way, the risk of a possible compromise is spread.
• Use different and strong passwords for each account - one that is at least six characters long, and is a combination of letters, numbers and capitals/lowercase.
• On a secure PC, log into your email and then check if any of the settings have been changed. This could indicate that your email account has been hacked, so ensure that if any of the settings have been altered, that you delete these immediately.
• Once you have changed the settings, create a new password, and add your secondary email account as your alternative address.
• Never list your main email address publicly anywhere online - in forums, in online advertisements, on blogs, social media or any place where it can be harvested by spammers. Use a separate email address for the internet which is not linked to your personal or business email account.
• Don’t use public computers to check email; there’s virtually no way to know if they have been accidentally infected with malware or have had keylogging spyware installed intentionally.

Source: https://sabric.co.za/media-and-news/press-releases/digital-banking-crime-statistics/