Do you have a credit card! Know why your money is in clear and present danger

Availing a credit card has become quite easy in India now. To fulfill targets, every credit card issuer knocks on your door telling you that you are entitled to one because your salary meets their the mandatory requirements. Days have long gone when, to get a credit card, you had to earn above Rs 25,000 in salary. However, credit cards are being offered to even people who have pay grade between Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 per month. A recent data of RBI reveals how rapidly credit card are being issued. For a salaried employees the first two weeks of a month are like glorious days as they have recently received their payment, but the moment third week kicks in, spending becomes less and less and then falls to minimal.

At month's end, most of the people end up using their credit card for just fulfilling basic needs, while others just swipe their credit cards for urgent needs like shopping, festive season to buy a new vehicle or invest partly in purchasing their dream house. Yes, credit cards do help you during every distress times.

But what happens when your credit card is not safe, and can actually make you debt trapped? A burden no one wants to bear! This can happen if you are profligate and waste money on various expenses rather than on savings. However, that is not what this article is about. Here we explain to you how you can become indebted to your bank if you fail to be careful and allow criminals to steal your credit card and other data and make off with your money. We are talking about phishing and the dangers it holds for your money.

A research report from RSA Security, a Dell Technologies business  which offers business-driven security solutions, revealed that India is among the top four countries targeted by phishing attackers. India stands only second to US in the targeted list, including Canada and Netherlands.

As per the research, phishing attacks together held 50% of total fraud attacks worldwide. Overall phishing volume stood at 70% in Q3. Credit card holders were highly attacked, as RSA recovered nearly 5.5 million unique comprised of such cards.

Hence, it is very important to stay alert from such fraudulent practices, if you don’t want to be among the victims.

What is phishing?

This is also one of the method scammers use to drain money from your bank account. There are many ways to steal your personal data and passwords for important services via online. One such practice under phishing is that a scammer will send you an email which will look like its from your own bank or another site, where payment information is stored.

Few examples of the mail could be, that they are having some technical issues in their computers, before asking you to re-submit your account details or credit card information etc.

They can also lure you with mails of discounts or information either to swindle you directly or to defraud you under other person’s name whom you know.

It is very important to note that, a customer must never provide their credit card details along with pin code or password who asks for information via email address.

How to detect phishing?

Personal information request!

One of the basic knowledge is that your respective bank or a legitimate financial institution will never ask for your financial account details. They may send you emails which involved offers, promotion of a facility or discounts, but will never ask for personal details. Even, they will send you credit card statement which is after when you have decided to opt for the facility. Hence, avoid the ones who ask your financial credentials on email.

Fake links!

This one is very important to remember. A phishing scammer will mail you with a link, and make you follow the link into your account. While you must be thinking that these links will take you to your bank’s official website, but in reality they will lead you to a fraudulent website.

One can detect false links, is by hovering the mouse cursor over the link before clicking on it. The moment you follow this practice, you will see in the bottom left bar to where the link will take you. Thereby, if the link address does not matches to your bank’s official website, then you should be suspicious.

If you feel that you are obliged to click on the link, then contact your bank or financial institution asking about the mail.

Mails with urgent actions from you!

The irony of scammers can be such that, they even can mail you with a scary content saying react quickly or someone is trying to access your bank account.

If you come across such a mail, then remember if a bank sees that there has been a suspicious action taken under your account they will either send you an SMS (if a transaction is made) or will block the account on its own (for instance someone trying passwords with your ID on website or ATMs). The account will be blocked until you open it again. Hence, there is no need for panic.

Greetings!

One way to understand a phishing mail, is also that some of the scammers try to greet you generally. For instance like they will mention ‘Dear User’ in the opening of mail. But remember that, a legitimate company will always use your first and last name in opening greeting.

Email address!

For your knowledge know that, a legitimate company or bank will not use  Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail or other web-based email addresses. They have their own email address which reflects the name of their entity. But some scammers may create an email id somewhat exactly like your company’s, so that you are confused and take immediate action. Considering this, check for errors in the email id names and also never rely solely on email address for financial information.

From the above, if you believe that you are likely to fall prey to phishing, then contact your bank and change your password and other important information. Be wise, Be careful. Every penny of your hard-earned money counts!