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With the popularity of online banking these days, e-Transfers have become one of the easiest and most convenient ways to pay or accept payment from someone. However, this recent technology boom has also allowed hackers, fraudsters, and identity thieves to develop new ways of stealing your money, particularly through e-Transfer scams.
In fact, there are multiple ways of falling victim to this type of cybercrime if you’re not careful when conducting bank transactions online.
As mentioned, there are a few different types of e-Transfer scams you may encounter when banking online, whether you’re sending money to someone or accepting payment from them. Here are some of the more common e-Transfer scams in Canada:
Marketplace websites like Kijiji, Craigslist, and Facebook are becoming popular ways of purchasing or selling products and services online. Sadly, they’re also good hunting grounds for scam artists. The scam could happen in two ways:
When either of these scams happens, the result is more or less the same. Your money is stolen and you receive nothing or the bank takes your e-Transfer funds back, leading to the loss of your item/service without payment. The bank may even accuse you of trying to scam someone, leading to a blocked account for several weeks.
Check out more ways on how to send money to a bank account.
Warning Signs
One of the most devastating and hard to spot scams is when your e-Transfer gets intercepted by a hacker, malware, or spyware on the desktop or mobile device that you use to access your email or online banking. It can be easy for a hacker or program to break into and monitor these kinds of accounts, then find out your banking details, passwords and other financial information.
Afterward, you merely need to get or send an email or text with a link to you or the recipient’s bank account, which is standard for e-Transfers. The scammer can then see or guess the security answer that gets typed in, especially if it’s an easy one, like your name or street. The transfer is then redirected to another account and all you receive is a notification telling you it’s been accepted.
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Warning Signs
While it might seem strange, it’s not uncommon for pet sellers and breeders to conduct business online, often using marketplaces like Kijiji. Unfortunately, there are many programs that scammers can use to create attractive websites, complete with pet profiles, customer reviews and fake licenses that look authentic.
Since some pets really cost hundreds of dollars, an e-Transfer might be preferable to paying by credit card. The supposed seller/breeder will then ask you for a deposit or payment before they deliver the animal, drop it off or allow you to pick it up. Several days later, you’re left with no pet, stolen money and a compromised bank account.
Find out what you should do if you’ve been a victim of credit card fraud.
Warning Signs
Some scammers will steal from you by depositing fraudulent cheques that end up bouncing. Before that happens and the funds are put on hold, they may be able to send an e-Transfer to their own account. Sadly, you might not notice anything is wrong until the cheque doesn’t clear and the bank flags your account soon after.
Because this crime is often a two-person job that results in the sender and recipient being flagged, you may be labelled as an accomplice until a proper investigation is conducted. For a better idea of how a bad deposit scam works, look into “cheque kiting”, which is a common scheme done exclusively with cheques.
Warning Signs
Check out this common loan scam in Canada.
Here, a potential “employer” will contact you about an employment opportunity on a job posting platform like LinkedIn, Indeed, or Glassdoor. This sometimes happens by email too. Of course, the opportunity is accompanied by high pay and benefits for doing a job that’s too easy to be real, such as withdrawing money from an ATM and depositing it at a bitcoin machine or, in this case, accepting and sending out e-Transfers.
Most of the time, the funds are being withdrawn from a secondary victim’s account and once again, your financial institution will flag your account because you’ve technically accepted fraudulent money. Until they determine that you weren’t an accomplice, you may not be able to conduct any transactions at all.
Check out why wire transfers are often used in scams.
Warning Signs
Scam artists are always coming up with clever ways to steal from you, particularly online, where security may not be tight (no matter what a financial institution tells you). What’s worse, in most scenarios, your bank or credit union won’t claim responsibility for the crime or reimburse you in any way for the money you lose to an e-Transfer scam.
Essentially, to avoid any lawsuits, most financial institutions will do or say almost anything to avoid being held liable, even if the e-Transfer was intercepted because of their own poor security protocols. So, unless you can prove that the e-Transfer scam was 100% the bank or credit union’s fault, chances are you won’t get your money back.
Nonetheless, there are a few things you can do to have your account protected better or stop the scam from happening again, such as:
Find out how long it takes to receive an e-transfer.
An e-Transfer scam can be a tough problem to deal with and recover from financially. Thankfully, there are a few key “do’s and don’ts” that can help you avoid and protect yourself against these types of scams in the future, both as a sender and a recipient.
Need to send money abroad? Check out these international money transfer services.
Despite the lack of security steps involved, registering for Interac e-Transfer Auto Deposit can be one of the safest and easiest ways to make sure you and your sender/recipient are protected against scams. After all, the money will go straight into the recipient’s account, hopefully, faster than any hacker could intercept it.
There are a few other things you can do to make an Auto Deposit e-Transfer even safer, including but not limited to:
While e-Transfers can be fast and convenient, it’s important to be safe and do research before you send or accept money online. Remember, if the deal looks too good to be true, it probably is. Trust your gut and don’t make these kinds of transactions with anyone you don’t know.
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