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Online banking fraud in South Africa on a slight decline

When banking online, one can never be too careful when it come to security matters in order to protect your personal details. Yet a number of South Africans fall victim to online fraud attempts ever year, with a good portion of people losing a lot of money.

But luckily for us, people are starting to wise up to the dangers associated with conducting money matters online, as a survey by research firm Columinate shows that successful online fraud is on the decline.

As part of Columinate’s annual SITEisfaction online banking survey, the company included findings regarding online fraud. Last year’s report showed a marked increase, but the 2015 survey has shown a slight decline.

“The number of people targeted for any type of fraud is at 55% (62% in 2014), while 12% (19% in 2014) fell victim to a successful attempt, and incurred some sort of financial loss,” Columinate’s CEO Dr Henk Pretorius said.

Usually with the survey Columinate included about three or four different scams that people can fall victim to, but for this year the company had to actually expand its criteria as the types of fraud increased. The survey now looked at instances of phising, smishing, deposit refund scams, 419 scams, key logging, SIM swapping, Pharming, Vishing and Beneficiary maintenance scam.

The slight decline in online fraud can be ascribed to the fact that two of South Africa’s largest banks have in the last year updated its websites, and that people have taken more measures to secure themselves.

According to the survey, 76% of people made sure that they didn’t reveal their personal details to someone that they didn’t trust. A large percentage of online banking users (74%) also said that they never respond to requests to login or transact, while 73% of respondents in the survey said that they never click on a link that they are presented with.

Coupled with the fact that 49% of the people in the survey said that internet banking is a vital part of their lives, it is actually a wonder that no more people have fallen victim to online fraud. By the last count there were about 14 million banked people with access to the internet, while 2.3 million actively make use of internet banking. 72% of people also have more than one banking account.

Overall this is good news for South Africans, as last year was a particular difficult year for keeping your things safe. According to Kaspersky Lab, there was one billion more cyber-attacks on machines it protected in 2014 when compared to the previous year – a huge increase on the frequency of attacks.

The security firm said that at the end of last year it analysed 12 100 mobile banking Trojans, which is nine times as many when compared to 2013.

[Image – CC by 2.0/Alexandre Dulaunoy]

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