Today, a lady called me claiming to be a staff of CBN. She said there was a total system upgrade of accounts by commercial banks, which CBN had mandated for all deposit money banks. She claimed she was calling on behalf of Access Bank and told me that my account had some issues that needed to be fixed.
She then said an OTP had been sent to my phone number linked to my account, and I actually saw a few digits appear. I was about to respond when my brother quickly warned me to ignore her; she was only trying to scam me.
My question is this: if it wasn’t a bank staff who revealed my information to them, how did they know I have an account with Access Bank? She even called my full name and recited some account details. It still amazes me till now. How did she get my bank details?
We give our informations out everyday even without knowing what they’re going to be used for. An example I’ll give is this government loans and grants that pose to be real but actually fake, they use that format to gather personal informations like this of us and send to scammers. Their websites always looks real and you’ll be prompt to fill in your details in order not to miss out on the grant not knowing they’re gathering your information to be sold out to this scammers den. It is very important we check and confirm where we send our personal details like this too especially our email address because phishing links can easily be sent there and they’ll pose as your bank sending it, and once clicked can direct you to a phishing site that can ask for your personal bank information and get access to your bank if you fill them out when assuming it’s your bank that sent the mail to you to fill in your information to maybe rectify something in your banks.