Amid a surge of cyber attack incidents, there is indisputably a growing need for most of us to keep our financial data safe and secure – away from the glare of mischievous elements.
There were 674,021 cyber-attacks in India until June this year, the government data reveals. This translates to nearly 3,700 cyber-attacks in a day, a report stated.
Cyber fraud incidents took place across sectors, from health to finance and insurance to power. A number of industries such as electricity distribution, telecom equipment, and banking suffered attacks from state and non-state actors in recent years. The report reveals vulnerabilities to threats such as data leaks and ransomware, have been rising.
These are some of the ways to minimise, if not eliminate the scope of frauds:
QR codes for receiving the payment: There are several cyber frauds that have taken place in the recent past wherein gullible customers were made to believe that they need to scan a QR code in order to receive the payment. Whereas, the code is scanned only by the sender of the payment and not the receiver.
So, next time you are selling goods to someone online, make sure not to get fooled into believing that the money can be received by your scanning the QR code.
Card tokenisation: When you make an online payment via your debit or credit card, remember that your card details are saved online. So, try not to save your card details at every merchant you buy the products from.
There is another way to keep your card details secure i.e., by using a tokenised card that can be used just as a credit or debit card. In that case, the token replaces your actual card details. A token is unique for a combination of card, token requestor and device.
Do not open suspicious links: Often times, fraudsters and scamsters send malicious links to their targets with an intent to steal important data. When most of the financial data is saved in your device — tablet, mobile or laptop, any malicious link you download can expose your data to a third party. So, be extra careful and downloading an unfamiliar link is a complete ‘no-no’.
There could be occasions when you end up giving remote access to your device by downloading an unverified app. This can be misused by fraudsters to steal money through UPI.
Keep passwords safe: Whether it is your net banking, UPI payment or mobile wallet, the access is enabled via passwords. When you keep your passwords easy to guess, you become prone to the cyber-attacks. On the other hand, those with difficult passwords which they change from time to time, access to their digital payments is kept safe and secure.
Never share your OTP: Time and again, banks and RBI keep cautioning their customers from revealing OTP to anyone, not even to the bank staff. Any digital transaction, whether made via debit or credit card, is authenticated by entering the one-time password. When you share this, you are effectively giving your consent to the transaction.
So, one must be careful before sharing financial data with anyone over phone or otherwise. And do not forget to take a cyber insurance for the untoward event.
And if a fraud does take place, you can receive your money back. According to a RBI’s notification in July 2017, a customer can get her money back in case the loss of money happened because of the bank’s negligence or deficiency.
And even if it’s a third-party breach, you can still receive the money so long as the aggrieved customer notifies the bank within three working days of occurrence of such a fraud.
