Banking fraud can affect anyone, from older users with fewer digital skills, to younger users. According to the Certfingarrison of Abi Lab on IT security, in 2023 in Italy 15 percent of digital banking scams occurred using the spoofing technique, with which fraudsters hide their identity to gain the trust of victims over the phone and thus manage to obtain information from them confidential and sensitive data.
INSIGHTS
The measurements
Spoofing scams grew by 13 percent compared to 2022. Significant numbers that require credit institutions to strengthen their enforcement measures. However, fraudsters don’t just rely on spoofing to break into victims’ vaults. Among the most used techniques are phishing, a term used to indicate attempted fraud via email, smishing, a variant of phishing that uses text messages as bait instead of emails, and vishing, a telephone fraud to steal data sensitive that occurs when scammers call pretending to be representatives of trusted institutions. In all of these forms of fraud, the communication appears to come from a trusted source, such as banks, credit card companies, or websites that require registration.
To avoid falling into the trap, you need to pay attention, for example, to the presence of suspicious links in the email or text message which seem to lead to the credit institution’s website but which, in reality, could divert the unfortunate person in question towards a clone website. Spelling and grammatical errors in the message are also a sign that something is wrong. In any case, credit institutions are taking action and are activating new functions to help customers understand in real time whether the person contacting them is actually a bank employee.
The digital bank Ing is one of the first to move on this front by activating the “Is it really Ing?” function. Damiano Zanisi, chief information officer of Ing Italiaexplains: «Online scams represent a social problem that causes significant economic and emotional damage to victims. Even young people, who spend a good part of their time immersed in the digital ecosystem, are affected: for this reason it is important to provide them with the tools to recognize fraud attempts and make them aware of the importance of verifying who contacts them, to understand if from on the other hand there is someone to trust or not.”
In collaboration with Digital World FoundationIng Italia also organized during the Milano Digital Week un evento educational, “Cyber detective for a day”, which involved around seventy young people, who were asked to solve a simulated case of financial fraud.
Broadening our gaze to all credit frauds, according to the Crif – Mister Credit Observatory, over 32,400 cases were recorded in Italy last year, with an average amount per fraud of 4,666 euros. Although according to the observatory’s data the number of cases is slightly decreasing compared to the previous year (-5.4%), the overall economic value is increasing by 14.5%: the threshold of 151 million has been exceeded euro. Even more alarming is the 21.1% increase in the average amount defrauded, which highlights a decidedly heavier financial impact for victims.
The exposed
How do you get out of it? According to experts, strengthening financial education represents a key element in the fight against credit fraud. Surveys on the level of financial literacy in Italy highlight a serious delay. To realize this, just scroll through the OECD tables updated to 2023, which assign Italy a score of 53 points out of 100 total. Germany, for example, achieved 76 points, France 62, Spain 64. The OECD average is 63 points.
Finally, in 2023, the Bank of Italy received over 11,200 complaints from bank customers, 21 percent more than in 2022. Reports linked to loan requests continued to represent the most significant share, equal to 35 percent of the total. 17 percent of the complaints concerned payment instruments and services (20 percent more compared to the previous year) and among these, reports of scams, although numerically limited in relation to the total volume of payment transactions carried out with alternative instruments to cash, they increased by 11 percent compared to 2022. The vast majority referred to hypotheses of theft of account access credentials and payment transaction authentication codes.
