Quickly-growing phone scam targets bank customers via text message
A quickly-growing phone scam targets banking customers via text message, pretending to be with a bank’s fraud department and asking about fake “suspicious withdrawals.”
While precautionary measures like text message verification are used to safeguard sensitive accounts from being hacked, one man told “CBS This Morning” that scammers subverted that process, tricking him into believing their scheme in part by using his bank’s actual phone number to text him.
Everything seemed legitimate when Pieter Gunst answered a call earlier this month that appeared to come from his bank. “A lady identified herself as Cindy at my particular bank, and told me there had been a fraud attempt on my account,” he said.
The caller asked Gunst, who lives in California, if he’d attempted a withdrawal in Miami. After Gunst said “No,” she asked for his bank member identification, and he gave it to her.
continue reading »
