Long after several people have been defrauded of their money through social engineering scams, Interswitch Nigeria the leading issuer of local ATM/Debit cards appears to be acting now. According to a recent report by Daily Trust:
Interswitch Nigeria Limited in collaboration with banks last week inaugurated an awareness campaign to protect ATM card holders against fraudsters and to educate them on the payment card in the country.
In the last few months there have been various messages requesting cardholders to register their debit, credit or cash card details under the guise of participating in non-existent promotions or with the promise of winning bogus prizes.
[…]
But inaugurating the cardholders’ awareness campaign in Lagos, the Managing Director of Interswitch, Mr. Mitchell Elegbe, explained that the main objective of the campaign scheduled to run on radio, newspapers, magazines and billboards is to protect card holders from fraudsters, who temper with ATM cards’ PINs in order to have access to cardholders banks’ accounts.
According to Mr. Elegbe, the joint campaign between Interswitch and participating banks, has been designed to also create awareness on card usage without generating unnecessary panic in the minds of cardholders and to also enlighten them of channels on which their cards can be used other than just cash withdrawals at ATMs.
I had blogged about such scams here and here in the past.
Well, I’d say better late than never. It beats me that the banks did not include a short manual with every ATM card they issued before now, warning customers about the possibility of fraudsters tricking them into giving up their ATM PIN codes and how to guard against such.
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