Gardaí have issued a public warning following two recent incidents where people were conned out large amounts of money.
Clare’s Crime Prevention Officer, Sergeant Triona O’Rourke, confirmed that Gardaí have had two reports of this type of crime during the week.
Sgt O’Rourke outlined the details of the most recent incidents.
“On the 24th September a gentleman received a text to his phone purporting to be from Bank of Ireland informing him that his account details needed updating – the gentleman clicked on the link in the text and later realised that his bank account had a large sum of money withdrawn from it and paid into an international account,” Sgt O’Rourke said.
“On the 23rd September another person got a similar text purporting to have come from Bank of Ireland and asked the person to update their mobile phone number via an e-mail link in the text – the person thought this was genuine and entered his user id and pin for his bank account and updated his mobile phone number. He realised on the 26th September that a large amount of cash had been taken from his bank account,” she added.
Sgt O’Rourke has issued the following advice:
- Never disclose your security details, PIN, full online banking or personal information in response to an email, phone call or letter claiming to be from your bank or other financial institution. Your bank would never ask you to disclose these.
- Your bank will never send you an email with a link to a page that asks you to enter your online banking details.
- Only ever visit your bank’s website by entering the address into your browser or using a bookmark you have created using the correct address. Always log onto a website directly rather than clicking on a link in an email or text.
- Always check your statements, and if you notice any unusual transactions, report them immediately
- Always log out of internet banking sessions once you have finished.
Be Secure
- Never use public Wi-Fi for online banking.
- Look for ‘https’ at the beginning of the address and the padlock symbol in the browser frame.
- Ensure you have effective and updated antivirus/anti-spyware software and firewall running before you log into your bank account.
- If you get a notification of a change of bank account details from a supplier always verify this change directly with the supplier.
- Be suspicious of all “too good to be true” offers and deals and don’t send money online to someone you have never met.
- Don’t take or return calls to international numbers that you don’t recognise.
For further information on how to detect and prevent fraud, click here.