P2P Safety Tips

Photo Credit: Unsplash.com

We’ve officially entered the holiday gift-giving season. Unfortunately, that means there’s a target on your back! Scammers use your generosity to steal money or even your identity. The focus of this post is popular peer-to-peer transfer services. Zelle and others are touted as a lightning-fast way to send cash to someone. To me, it sounds like a great opportunity for a scammer.

Picture this. You’re short on time and ideas for gifts this year. Everyone loves cash, so why not skip the stress of hunting for the perfect gift and zip some moolah to the people on your gift list? During your giving spree, you receive a text from your bank telling you there has been suspicious activity on your account. You text back “yes” to confirm that you were indeed making those transfers only to be met with an incoming phone call moments later. Your bank wants you to verify your identity. You answer some questions – your username included – and read back the passcode they text or email to you, and voila! Now that you’ve dealt with the pesky fraud verification, you can go back to your holiday tasks, right? Wrong. You’ve just gotten scammed.

What you didn’t realize is that the representative from your bank was actually a fraudster spoofing your bank’s phone number. They accessed your account with the username that you provided and used your passcode verification to authorize a password change. Now you no longer have access to your own account. What’s worse is that even with new security measures, criminals are still finding ways to target victims.

This holiday season, if you still insist on using payment apps, proceed with caution. If you receive a communication that claims to be coming from your financial institution, do yourself a favor. Hang up. You can call them back at a known, published number and discuss any potential security concerns knowing that you are speaking to someone legitimately at your bank and not a random potential scammer.

Don’t forget to:

·         Keep your username and password confidential. Don’t share this information with anyone – not even your bank.

·         Register for purchase alerts on every debit and credit card that you have.

·         Check your account balance and transactions frequently to catch suspicious transactions early.

Protect your accounts from unauthorized use this holiday season, and don’t give more than you bargained for! Maybe buy a gift card instead. :)

What did you think of this post? I want to hear from you. Drop a comment below or send me an email!

Krista Kyte is a personal finance blogger and personal banker with over 18 years of experience in the financial industry. Krista is passionate about helping our members understand their financial situations. She writes tips that help consumers reach and maintain financial security and start living the life they’ve always wanted.