What: Businesses deal with large geographies and procure/ship products from/to different parts of the world. Most of the business communication happens through emails. However, everyone does not pay the required attention to a security mechanism for safeguarding emails/electronic communications and Fraudsters take advantage of this.

How: Fraudsters either infect intended victim’s computer system with malware/viruses/key loggers etc. and monitor their emails or are known to customer/their clients. Whenever they see a deal getting through and reaching the payment stage, they change the banking account details and send it to the victim using similar looking email id as of their clients, and unsuspecting customers transfer the funds to a fraudulent account instead of the actual beneficiary account.

Safeguards:

• Be suspicious if a mail is received from a client informing about change of his email/ banking details. Please call the client on their phone number to crosscheck if they have initiated the email.
• Always check all characters in an email id and if not matching, call your client to confirm.
• If the email directs you to send money in a different IBAN/Account, please call your client to confirm.
• Always call only on your client’s known phone numbers and not on the numbers mentioned in an email.
• Change your password regularly and create strong & complex passwords and change them frequently. Never use the same password across all applications.
• For different e-mail accounts, use a different password and never share passwords with anyone.
• Have an updated Anti-Virus software on your computers to block malware/viruses/key loggers.
• Surf the Internet carefully.