We Turks love gifts and rewards. Of course, this habit of ours can be an opportunity for fraudsters. I want to share an incident that happened to me recently, in the belief that it could happen to anyone:
A person who was already a Facebook friend of my wife sent her a friend request. While my wife was wondering what was going on, since this person was already on her friend list, I told her that the account might have been stolen, or that someone might have opened an account using that person's details. I still told her to accept the friend request, because I was curious to see what would happen :)
As soon as my wife accepted the friend request, the person started writing messages. After "Hello, how are you?", they continued with "I have a surprise for you". The fraudster learned that my wife's friend worked at Isbank and started running a scenario built around Isbank. They said that Isbank would distribute points worth 2,500 TL to 100 people, and that my wife was the first person who came to mind.
Earning 250 TL without doing anything sounds nice :)
Then they said that if I sent my card details, they could load the points onto my card right away. I said I did not have a Maximum card and that I had a card from another bank. They said that was fine, they would load it onto that one too.
As someone who has spent a third of his life in payment systems, I knew this was not possible. But I was also curious where this would go. I said I had my card ready. They told me to give the card number written on the card. I gave it with a few digits changed. They told me to send the expiry date on the card. Again I gave a different value. Then they told me to turn the card over and give the 3-digit number there. (They are actually asking for the CVV2 :)) I gave that information too. Messages stopped for about 2 minutes. Clearly, they tried to get an authorization from the card with the information they received :). When the authorization failed, they immediately started writing again. They said they could not load points onto the card with the card details provided and asked me to check the card details again.
I got angry thinking about what people who make unjust gains by exploiting a moment of distraction do to others. So I did not drag the incident out any further. I told them that I was a banker, that I had all their details, and that I would report them to the police. After that they stopped writing, and there was a brief silence. Then they immediately blocked my wife and went offline.
You may encounter a similar situation too. You must be careful about these matters.
In short,
- Banks do not offer gestures to their customers through Facebook or through bank employees. They do it through their professional teams that manage campaigns.
- Banks do not request their customers' sensitive data (card details, card PIN, etc.). If someone comes with such a request, treat it with suspicion.
- Be suspicious of marketing offers with very low prices or guaranteed very high returns, and never share your card details with such people.
- If you are going to make such transactions, use a virtual card, set the card limit equal to the transaction limit, and reset the card limit to zero at the end of the day.
