We all know how easy is to send money online.

With the increased popularity of electronic money transfers, fraudsers have developed a special interest in intercepting this type of transactions. They will try to redirect these funds to other recipients, to intermediate bank accounts and, from there, to various destinations, making the recovery of those funds often impossible.
Since these transactions are completed electronically, everything happens within seconds, and if the sender is not paying attention to some details, the funds end up being deposited to the hacker’s account.

How can you minimize the risk of being exposed to fraudulent transactions?
If you are a sender:
– use security questions that only you and the recipient have access to. Do not share the answers to the security questions with anybody else.
– split the secure information over multiple communication channels, i.e.: send the security question by email and the answer by text message.
– create complex passwords, using letters, numbers and symbols.

If you are a recipient:
– use strong and unique passwords for all the accounts involved and avoid information that is easy to guess.
– use multi-factor authentication for your accounts, when supported.
– be alert when receiving emails or text messages and avoid following suspicious instructions or links to websites you never visited before.

Whether you are a sender or a recipient, contact your IT department if you have any questions and, when discovered, report fraud attempts to the proper authorities.