Anyone who uses the banking app Revolut has been issued a stark warning after two people were scammed out of thousands of pounds by fraudsters.
Consumer champions at Which? have urged people to remain vigilant when using the popular banking app after scammers used ‘near-identical’ tactics to drain business accounts of more than £200,000.
Revolut has said that the individuals will not be reimbursed for these losses – although it confirmed to Which? that it was aware of a recent spike in scam attempts across the industry.
Wales Online reports that the fraudsters were able to pass the ‘selfie’ security protocol on the app in order to swipe over £200,000 from victims in February this year. One victim allegedly had £165,000 stolen from their business account, which has left their company on the “brink of bankruptcy”.
The second fraud victim lost over £40,000 in the space of just ten minutes. In both of these cases, large amounts of money were sent to various HSBC accounts which were opened or controlled by fraudsters.
The neobank told Which? that it was in the process of ‘strengthening’ its fraud controls, but would not be reimbursing the victims.
Both of the cases were investigated and it was found that the firm’s multi-factor authentication checks had been completed.
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A Revolut spokesperson told Which?: ‘We are sorry to hear of (these) cases and any instance where our customers have been targeted by ruthless and sophisticated criminals. Each potential fraud case concerning a Revolut customer is carefully investigated and assessed independently of other cases. We are aware of a recent increase in advanced Account Takeover (ATO) scam attempts by criminals across the industry.
“We are continuously strengthening our fraud controls to stay one step ahead of this trend, introducing further direct interventions and sharing educational materials with our customers so they are able to spot the social engineering tactics of criminals.”
Revolut has also shared some tips in order to help people avoid falling victim to scams, including:
- Don’t share your password, passcode, PIN, selfie or one-time passcode (OTP) with anyone else.
- If you receive an email asking you to confirm your device, when you haven’t added one or don’t recognise it, please ignore it and flag it as spam.
- Don’t click on any links or buttons in an email like this, or forward it to anyone else.
- Never download remote access software to your device.
- Scammers will send fake emails asking for these things, or use your email address to fail a login attempt, so they can contact you pretending to help secure your account.
- If you think you have fallen victim to a scam, freeze your cards immediately and contact Revolut customer support via our secure in-app chat.
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