Anna:
I decided to earn extra money on maternity leave and began to look for a remote location on the Internet. I posted my resume on a popular job site. Soon the girl called and said that she was looking for call center operators in her cosmetics store. She offered a good salary and only worked three hours a day. Just what I need.
We began to discuss the details, she asked me to download several programs for work on her phone - to maintain a customer base, record calls and something else, I don't remember exactly. I said the names of the programs on the phone, and I downloaded them from the official play market.
And after a while my phone turned off and for some reason began to open all sorts of applications, as if someone controlled it for me. A message came from the bank that someone is trying to transfer money from my card. I panicked and turned off the phone.
It's good that my husband was at home and was able to sit with the child, and I ran to the nearest bank branch with my passport. There they told me that I most likely downloaded a virus that stole my password from the online bank, and they tried to withdraw money from me. But apparently there was something wrong with the scammers themselves, and they did not have time to remove anything.
Just in case, the employee temporarily blocked my cards and access to the online bank. And I was advised to clean the phone, in the sense of removing all these new applications, download antivirus, and then change passwords everywhere. So you've earned it.
Financial Culture Expert:
Remote work is becoming more and more popular, and scammers are taking advantage of it. They find contacts of people on job search sites, call job seekers and offer them to install mobile applications for organizing remote work. In fact, these programs provide cybercriminals with remote access to users' gadgets, and this allows them to get to bank accounts.
The danger of the scheme is that even a vigilant person does not immediately recognize a fraud, because they do not require any confidential data or money. On the contrary, they offer a salary, and the programs are asked to download from the official app store.
Almost all of these programs are safe, and some may even be familiar to the job applicant. It also inspires confidence.
But one of the apps the criminals offer to install on their smartphones gives them remote access to the applicant's gadget. If they manage to extract the login details for an online bank or a banking mobile application, they can steal all the money from a person or even arrange a loan on his behalf.
To find out logins and passwords, as well as codes from messages from the bank, hackers can sew a spyware into the program. Often, criminals send a download link for this program, and the user takes it to a fake site that looks like the page of the official app store.
Sometimes a malicious program is indeed located in well-known application directories, because there they do not always have time to immediately check all programs downloaded by developers.
And in some cases, criminals use completely legal applications to control computers and smartphones remotely. Typically, these applications try to protect users from unauthorized access. For example, they send a code that must be entered before starting work. In such cases, fraudsters, under various pretexts, try to entice this code from the owner of the smartphone.
It is important to understand that banks do not return money if a person himself has given confidential information to criminals, entered it on a fraudulent website, or downloaded a program to his device that opens access to his accounts.
Nina did the right thing to turn off her smartphone: the remote access program stopped working. Although the virus and the dangerous application have not gone anywhere.
Then it would be worthwhile to immediately call the bank (for example, from the home number or the phone of the husband) to report the incident and consult with a bank specialist. After all, every minute increases the chances of criminals to steal money if they managed to find out the details of accounts and cards.
As a rule, the bank immediately blocks cards or outgoing transactions with them, disables remote access to accounts through a personal account on the website and a mobile application.
And after that, you really need to go to the department and write statements: about the re-issue of cards and about disagreement with the operations, if the fraudsters still managed to carry them out.
And of course, you need to remove all applications that were downloaded at the request of the criminals, check the phone for viruses and update the protection.
Logins and passwords should be changed not only for online and mobile banking, but primarily for e-mail. After all, important information from the bank can come to it, for example, a report on operations and account balance or links and codes for accessing a personal account.
Cyber hygiene rules will help to secure money:
For more information on how to counter cybercriminals, read the texts "How to quickly recognize a fraudster" and "Phishing: what it is and how to protect yourself from it".
I decided to earn extra money on maternity leave and began to look for a remote location on the Internet. I posted my resume on a popular job site. Soon the girl called and said that she was looking for call center operators in her cosmetics store. She offered a good salary and only worked three hours a day. Just what I need.
We began to discuss the details, she asked me to download several programs for work on her phone - to maintain a customer base, record calls and something else, I don't remember exactly. I said the names of the programs on the phone, and I downloaded them from the official play market.
And after a while my phone turned off and for some reason began to open all sorts of applications, as if someone controlled it for me. A message came from the bank that someone is trying to transfer money from my card. I panicked and turned off the phone.
It's good that my husband was at home and was able to sit with the child, and I ran to the nearest bank branch with my passport. There they told me that I most likely downloaded a virus that stole my password from the online bank, and they tried to withdraw money from me. But apparently there was something wrong with the scammers themselves, and they did not have time to remove anything.
Just in case, the employee temporarily blocked my cards and access to the online bank. And I was advised to clean the phone, in the sense of removing all these new applications, download antivirus, and then change passwords everywhere. So you've earned it.
Financial Culture Expert:
Remote work is becoming more and more popular, and scammers are taking advantage of it. They find contacts of people on job search sites, call job seekers and offer them to install mobile applications for organizing remote work. In fact, these programs provide cybercriminals with remote access to users' gadgets, and this allows them to get to bank accounts.
The danger of the scheme is that even a vigilant person does not immediately recognize a fraud, because they do not require any confidential data or money. On the contrary, they offer a salary, and the programs are asked to download from the official app store.
Almost all of these programs are safe, and some may even be familiar to the job applicant. It also inspires confidence.
But one of the apps the criminals offer to install on their smartphones gives them remote access to the applicant's gadget. If they manage to extract the login details for an online bank or a banking mobile application, they can steal all the money from a person or even arrange a loan on his behalf.
To find out logins and passwords, as well as codes from messages from the bank, hackers can sew a spyware into the program. Often, criminals send a download link for this program, and the user takes it to a fake site that looks like the page of the official app store.
Sometimes a malicious program is indeed located in well-known application directories, because there they do not always have time to immediately check all programs downloaded by developers.
And in some cases, criminals use completely legal applications to control computers and smartphones remotely. Typically, these applications try to protect users from unauthorized access. For example, they send a code that must be entered before starting work. In such cases, fraudsters, under various pretexts, try to entice this code from the owner of the smartphone.
It is important to understand that banks do not return money if a person himself has given confidential information to criminals, entered it on a fraudulent website, or downloaded a program to his device that opens access to his accounts.
Nina did the right thing to turn off her smartphone: the remote access program stopped working. Although the virus and the dangerous application have not gone anywhere.
Then it would be worthwhile to immediately call the bank (for example, from the home number or the phone of the husband) to report the incident and consult with a bank specialist. After all, every minute increases the chances of criminals to steal money if they managed to find out the details of accounts and cards.
As a rule, the bank immediately blocks cards or outgoing transactions with them, disables remote access to accounts through a personal account on the website and a mobile application.
And after that, you really need to go to the department and write statements: about the re-issue of cards and about disagreement with the operations, if the fraudsters still managed to carry them out.
And of course, you need to remove all applications that were downloaded at the request of the criminals, check the phone for viruses and update the protection.
Logins and passwords should be changed not only for online and mobile banking, but primarily for e-mail. After all, important information from the bank can come to it, for example, a report on operations and account balance or links and codes for accessing a personal account.
Cyber hygiene rules will help to secure money:
- Install antivirus software on all devices you use. This will help you protect them from malware that can even be found in official app stores. Update your anti-virus protection regularly.
- Don't follow questionable links from strangers. And don't download apps until you figure out what exactly they do, how users respond about them.
- Before fulfilling requests from unknown companies, such as potential employers, check their information. Find the official website of the organization on the Internet, read reviews, punch the company in the media - suddenly it is involved in scandals. If an organization was registered just a couple of weeks ago and there is no information about it yet, it is also better not to contact it. Such fly-by-night firms are most often created by scammers.
- Never give anyone passwords and codes from messages from banks, full details of a bank card, including expiration date and a three-digit code from the turnover. And do not enter this data on dubious sites, do not link the card to unknown applications.
For more information on how to counter cybercriminals, read the texts "How to quickly recognize a fraudster" and "Phishing: what it is and how to protect yourself from it".
