Jamie García, who is part of the SSF, spoke in an interview about the types of scams to which users of national banking services are exposed. The most common scams received are from fraudsters posing as lending institutions that create fictitious companies on social networks, with which they manage to deceive people in order to steal their money.

The scammers request amounts of money disguised as insurance for non-payments or paperwork for paperwork and when the victim has already paid, the criminals disappear. One of the characteristics that people can identify these false credit institutions is that they use the SSF logo and in the country, no financial institution can use the logos of the superintendence of the financial system.

It is also important to be alert to incoming calls offering financial products or to solve debt problems. Garcia mentioned that scammers sometimes have worked in banks before, so they know how these institutions work inside and it is easier for them to impersonate them. 

Other scams that are currently being used is Phishing, which is when fraudsters try to impersonate banking institutions in order to steal confidential data from users through e-mails, in which they ask for data or password updates in order to steal them.

Another modality is Vishing, which occurs through telephone calls where fraudsters impersonate the identity of the Call Center of the banks to request personal data from their customers in order to gain access to their bank accounts.

In the area of text messages, there is Spoofing, which again impersonates the telephone numbers of banking institutions. In this type of theft, the fraudsters send messages in which they ask the victims to enter their personal data through malicious web links, which collect the information to be used by the cybercriminals.

García also reminded people that it is forbidden by law for banking institutions to share personal data among them and that in case of receiving calls offering to contract services such as credit cards or to change services from one bank to another, they should ask the institution to stop these requests.

The FSS official also mentioned that there is a Center for fraud reports of the Financial Superintendence, which works together with other state institutions to solve the crimes of which people who feel they have been victims of a crime.

Translated by: A.M