Have you ever been a victim of online frauds? How did it happen to you? Did you lose any money? Did you inform your bank? What steps did your bank take to help you? Did the incident make you wiser? What steps do you take now to protect your online identity and confidential details like banking passwords?
This is what we asked Get Ahead readers. And here's an interesting experience that reader Ramesh Vishwanathan, 35, a software engineer from India had in Australia.
My horrible experience with internet banking fraud relates to a foreign bank. I am a software engineer working for a leading IT company in India. I was sent to Australia for a year. Like many Indian software engineers, I had a dream of saving Rs 10-12 lakh a year, return to India, and buy a house.
As per the company rules I had to open a salary account in ANZ Bank, Australia. After 6 months, I managed to save 10,000 Australian dollars and decided to buy a laptop. This is where my troubles began.
I visited the Dell Australia site (from my official computer), where I customised my laptop and went to the payment page. I had to choose from various payment options, which were credit card, online fund transfer, cheque etc. Since I didn't have an Australian credit card and wasn't sure about how long the cheque might take to be processed, I decided to use the online fund transfer facility.
I had to enter my name and address and other details. As soon as I clicked enter, I was supposed to be navigated to a page where I would receive the Dell Australia's bank account details. Instead, I was surprised to see a credit card authorisation page, where my address was already present in the credit card number field. This is where I committed the biggest mistake. I clicked the 'back' button. I went back to the online fund transfer page, entered my details once again and pressed enter. Then I received Dell Australia's bank account details. I opened my bank website (on the same window, another mistake), logged in and completed my fund transfer.
Dell Australia received my payment, I received my laptop within 10 days and I thought all was well.
After a week, I received a call from a lady in Bangalore, on behalf of ANZ, asking me whether I have made any donation to a guy in the Netherlands. I was shocked. The lady said that she was at ANZ's clearing centre and asked me to immediately open my bank account page. I found that there were 3 international fund transfers of 5,000, 2,000 and 1,000 Australian dollars made to an account in the Netherlands.
She told me that since the account holder was an Indian name and the balance was only 10,000 Australian dollars, she felt that the person was probably an Indian software guy who would not really make such a 'donation'. I thanked her for her presence of mind and asked her to immediately cancel the transactions. She told me that she could stop two of them, but one transaction of 2,000 Australian dollars had already gone through and she would not be able to stop it. She advised me to contact the local ANZ branch and take further action.
I had to rush to the branch, lodge a complaint, then file a case with the local police station and undergo enough mental torture. After three months of tension, ANZ Bank finally returned the stolen money to my account.
Had the clearing agent in Bangalore not stopped two of those transactions, I would have been left without any money in my account.
What had really happened was that the person stealing the account details was tracking the Dell site and capturing the internet banking login details. Unfortunately, unlike many Indian bank sites, there was no provision of verifying online payee details. I have not used ANZ banking site for a long time now. I don't know if they have improved the security of the site.
I have learnt my lesson and decided that I would:
~ Use online fund transfer facility only if the site offers payee verification facility. Otherwise, request the bank to disable the facility
~ Use internet banking only on personal laptop at home
~ Close ALL other windows and chat sessions while opening internet banking and always open a fresh browser window to login to the bank site
~ NEVER use the back button when a payment is involved
~ Have a latest version of anti virus and spyware software, even if it means purchasing a licensed version for Rs 2,000 a year. Avoid buying pirated version of anti-virus software for Rs 300 from local vendors, as they will not have online version updation facility
I hope sharing my experience will be useful to everyone using internet banking facility.
Disclaimer: This is a reader-driven feature. The views expressed by the readers are their own, and not that of Rediff.com. Rediff.com has not altered the material presented here and does not endorse it in any way.
Reader invite
Have you ever been a victim of online frauds? How did it happen to you? Did you lose any money? Did you inform your bank? What steps did your bank take to help you? Did the incident make you wiser? What steps do you take now to protect your online identity and confidential details like banking passwords?
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