For years, the Bank of Spain has been warning of the innumerable banking frauds that run daily through the networks, a continuous danger not only for clients but also for entities in the sector. The latest trend: is ‘phishing’, a quite sophisticated practice in which they can impersonate the identity of companies such as Banco Santander, la Caixa, or Ibercaja.
Precisely, the latter has been one of the most attacked, revealing its cybersecurity systems against hackers and cyber-attacks. And all despite warnings on her own website with certain prevention recommendations to her clients, such as
“Install a phishing filter in your email application and also in your web browser.”
Even so, the Zaragoza entity has seen cases of ‘phishing’ related to its services increase in the last week. Thus, Maria Gomez, a fictitious name and client of the banking company, has reported to cryptotechnewz.com how a few days ago she was a victim of this unique fraud through some messages and phone calls originating from ‘Ibercaja’, and that they supposed a loss of around 500 euros.
Phishing can impersonate bank identities
In fact, it is common for fraudsters to send messages to the victim, either in the form of email or SMS, urging them to click on a web link and impersonate the bank in question. One of the reasons for the success of ‘phishing’ is the trust of customers in their banks, which causes a feeling of security that makes many people end up clicking on this fraudulent link, which is nothing more than a redirect to an identical website to that of the banking entity, and registering their access codes. Quick and relatively simple to hack a mobile phone and obtain banking passwords.
As stated by Ibercaja on its website, the deception comes through a suspicious notice with various excuses in relation to the fact that “the account has been blocked and must be unlocked”, or the client “has to activate the new web security”, and also referring to the use of the card that “is suspended and must be reactivated.“
In 2020, 15% of users received web links to some type of false banking entity page
In any case, María Gómez has insisted on the very fact of impersonation with Ibercaja data, since both the SMS and calls received, she confirmed, came from phones registered as Ibercaja. What’s more, the victim has stressed that the same calls were made from a landline number that corresponds to one of the Ibercaja branches located in the central district of Madrid.
Verification codes
Once the fraud victim has fallen for it and has made use of the web link received, the scammers’ next step is phone calls. Thus, hackers make contact by impersonating a real phone number, pretending that they are a bank agent, and then begin making different charges of different amounts. Precisely, and with the excuse of verification, the hacker asks the client for the numerical series that he has just received on his mobile phone, which is nothing more than the approval to make said charges.
Blocked accounts
For her part, and given the more than evident weaknesses of Ibercaja’s cyber defensive system against possible attacks, fraud, and scams, Maria Gomez has ended up telling CTN how the entity itself has ended up blocking her bank accounts, as well as all her cards. of credit and debit in a preventive manner until the problem is solved.
Despite the quick action, the victim has acknowledged the discomfort that arose and has even confessed to the possibility of changing banks. However, the reality is that no company in the sector is safe, and even less so with the great advances in technology and artificial intelligence.
Not in vain, according to the Statista analytical solution, in 2020, 15% of Spanish users received some type of invitation to click on or go to a fake banking entity website.
