What is "vishing", this fake banker phone scam?

Ophélie Artaud 5:30 p.m., January 20, 2023

Thousands, even tens of thousands of euros, stolen from the victims' bank accounts in just a few minutes.

Increasingly widespread, a very profitable scam is carried out following a simple phone call.

This is called "vishing", a contradiction of "phishing" and "voice".

How does it work, and how do you protect yourself against it?

Europe 1 takes stock.

How does the scam work?

Imagine, you receive a phone call from your bank.

The number is the same as that of your agency, and the person on the line introduces himself as your adviser.

Worried, he alerts you to suspicious movements on your bank account and seems to know everything about you: your name, your date of birth, your postal address and even your bank details.

He then urges you to give him personal information or click on a link directly on your phone, telling you that this will cancel the transaction.

Except that in reality, it is he who is hacking into the account... And by the time you realize it, it is already too late.

Especially since, as

points out , these scams often take place in the evening or on weekends, so that the victim cannot contact his real bank.

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Increasingly sophisticated frauds, which affect all categories of populations and have already claimed hundreds of victims.

With the numerous data leaks in recent years, the personal information of thousands of people has been recovered.

Cybercriminals then only have to buy them back, often via the darknet and for a few tens of euros.

Once all this information has been collected, all they have to do is contact the victim.

How to protect yourself from it?

If the technique seems well established and difficult to detect, there are several rules to follow in all circumstances to protect yourself from "vishing" attempts, as detailed on the cybermalveillance.gouv.fr site.

First of all, you should never communicate your bank details, even by telephone.

No bank adviser will ask for this kind of personal information.

You must also be vigilant about transaction validation requests because "these often take the form of a number to communicate and which could lead you to validate transactions of which you are not the author", explains the site.

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More generally, you must also regularly check your bank account to identify any suspicious debits, use complex passwords and not click on suspicious links, whether by email or SMS.

What to do if you are a victim?

If you think you are the victim of a scam, the first thing to do is to quickly contact your bank, block your bank card and request the repatriation of the funds withdrawn.

However, it is not sure to recover the stolen sum.

Because as

points out , few banks agree to reimburse their customers, who are considered to be at fault for having validated the fraudulent transaction.