Mobile phone scams have proliferated during the COVID-19 pandemic, with fraudsters taking advantage of people through everything from attempts to steal stimulus money or dupe people into paying for fake vaccines to romance scams, IRS impersonations and even ransom attempts on fake kidnappings. And mobile banking fraud is a part of it.
Indeed, more than half of Americans have received scam calls and/or text messages (smishing) in the past year, according to Truecaller. And while most didn’t take the bait, nearly 60 million Americans reported that they were victims of phone scams, resulting in a collective loss of roughly $30 billion.
“Many are suggesting you have a payment due, or thank you for your payment, or say ‘Click here to complete a survey,’” says Wade H. Barnes, financial services practice leader at Hartman Executive Advisors in Timonium, Maryland. “In each case the threat actor wants you to click a link where they’ll either ask for your user credentials or attempt to install malicious code on a mobile device.”
Bad actors can identify a person’s mobile carrier and send a smishing attack about a pending payment in an attempt to gain access to a user’s account, he says. By getting access to a mobile phone account, fraudsters can intercept text message multifactor authentications and leverage this to attack the victim’s work, email or bank accounts.
Reducing mobile banking fraud
To reduce mobile banking fraud, more banks are…
