SINGAPORE – Scammers all over the world are working hard to come up with new, ever more ingenious and devious ways to get you to part with your money.
It is impossible to predict what they will be up to next but you stand a fair chance of avoiding scams if you do not divulge your personal details easily in all kinds of scenarios.
Take the experience of one of our readers. He told Invest recently that he was surprised when a stranger deposited about $120 into his bank account via his mobile phone, which is registered with the PayNow system. He did not know the sender and wondered how the person obtained his phone number. But he made the right call – he went to his bank, which asked him to lodge a police report.
“The idea is to make it clear that I did not ask for and would not keep the money,” he says. He then gave a copy of the report to the bank so that it could deal with the money.
Bank officials say that while strangers may be able to deposit money into your account using your mobile number, they would not be able to extract other banking information from such transactions or compromise the account’s security.
It is unclear why the sender would deposit money into a stranger’s account – after all, you are likely to be very careful when keying in the recipient’s data before you press “submit”.
So what should you do if this happens?
Never call or disclose your particulars
First, don’t call the sender because he may be expecting to hear from you because he could be…
