How to survive fraud attack on your bank accounts

By Preeti Kulkarni, ET Bureau | 24 Jun, 2013, 03.22AM IST

Many bank customers were a bit concerned when they heard that fraudsters cleared off Rs13 lakh a few days ago from 29 Axis Bank accounts, including the Mumbai police's salary accounts. In fact, in the past few months there were many instances of ATM, card and online frauds. Naturally, many people are wondering whether they will be the next victims of some fraudsters.

"Suspicious transactions arise from two aspects — card-present-transactions such as withdrawals from ATM or cards swiped at stores and cardnot-present transactions such as purchases through internet and mail order or over the phone," says VN Kulkarni, chief credit counselor with the Bank of India-backed Abhay Credit Counselling Centre. Scamsters resort to methods like skimming (duplicating the card), phishing (securing sensitive details over email), vishing (getting the details from customers over phone) to compromise your cards. Skimming, or cloning, usually takes place at point-of-sale terminals at shopping outlets and in case of phishing, customers are duped into revealing their confidential information over e-mails.

DEALING WITH FRAUDS

The first step, of course, is to intimate the bank of the fraud or suspicious transaction at the earliest. "As soon as customers get to know that a fraud has occurred, they should report the matter to the bank quickly — through phone, e-mail or in person and take an acknowledgment from the bank. On its part, the bank should immediately take steps to control the damage inflicted by the fraud and also ensure that no further harm is done to customers' interests. An investigation should immediately be conducted by an appropriate authority of the bank, independent of its IT department. If the bank is unable to prove that the customer is specifically responsible for the fraud by compromising his password or in any other manner, it should compensate the customer adequately and fairly," says AC Mahajan, chairman, the Banking Codes and Standards Board of India (BCSBI). "The onus is on the bank to prove that the customer is at fault — only then can the customer be held responsible. The BCSBI code is silent on IT frauds at present, but the code is under revision and the matter has already been taken up for discussion by the committee appointed to recommend revisions to the code," adds Mahajan.