We continue to hear more and more stories of clients’ email accounts being hacked, which is a very concerning trend, especially when it involves the security of one’s financial transactions
Criminals are managing to hack into emails, monitor your communications, and notice when you are emailing an adviser or an administrator at a financial planning firm or are about to make a payment . They then craft an email that closely mimics the one from the financial planning firm, rewriting the email and inserting a false bank account for you to deposit the money into. You might receive the email, not notice the tiny change in the email address, and unknowingly pay the money into the fraudster’s account.
If you ever receive an email from Veritas Wealth instructing you to transfer money to a bank account, please DO NOT reply, but rather phone our office immediately. We will never instruct you to transfer into a bank account.
It is critical that, as our client, you are aware of the two very safe ways of paying money to a local service provider.
- The safest way is for the service provider to arrange a debit order from your bank account. They can create a debit order of R2m daily. If it is R6m, this will take three days to complete. The only downside to this, is that you will not be able to withdraw the money for 45 days.
- The next safest way is for you to transfer the money through your online banking site or app and use a “Public Beneficiary.” All of these financial services accounts are preloaded at the banks.
Importantly, for offshore transactions, these companies do not have these abilities. You would have to preload the foreign exchange company’s bank details on your banking profile and then transfer the money to them. Again, the first time you do a transaction, it may be worth phoning the company beforehand to make sure that the account details are correct.
We will continue to educate our clients about these often, devastating crimes and how best to circumvent them. It is important to be aware that unfortunately, if your email account has been hacked, then the responsibility will lie with you, and our Professional Indemnity insurance will not cover this. It is a horrible situation for both the financial planning firm and even more so for the client.
To further protect yourself, consider taking the following actions
- Enable two-factor authentication on your email accounts. This adds an extra layer of security by requiring a second form of verification
- Regularly update your passwords and use strong, unique passwords
- Be mindful of the information you share online
- Avoid clicking on suspicious links or downloading unknown attachments
- Keep your software and antivirus programmes up to date to protect against malware and other threats.
By staying vigilant and taking these precautions, we can significantly reduce the risk of our personal email accounts being hacked, minimise the risk of cyber-attacks and safeguard our financial information as well as personal data from being compromised
Thanks for this certainly shows the sophistication the fraudsters are capable of. The need to be kept abreast of new ploys used is critical and I would suggest should be a regular part of your news briefing letter.