Social Engineering is a term used to describe the process of manipulating people into giving up their personal information.

It could be stealing someone’s identity, data related to financial matters, or other online scams and cybercrimes.

It’s often done by pretending to be someone else or using social media to gain access to sensitive data.

This article will show you how social engineering works and how it can be used against any person or banks and other financial institutions.

It is frequently seen that people are getting fooled mainly due to lack of knowledge and incur a huge financial loss.

Banks and other financial institutions use a variety of methods to protect themselves from fraud.

One method is the requirement of customers to verify their identities through various means such as verifying their address, phone number, or email address.

Another common method is the requirement of customers to provide additional forms of identification when making transactions.

And at present, most of the transactions are required to authenticate with OTP or security passwords. For instance, online banking transaction required OTP to complete the transaction besides having its own user credentials.

Another example is the Google that has good password management tools. You even get notification when you log in to other devices.

These are some of the mechanism that protect us from unauthorised access to our personal data.

However, these measures aren’t foolproof. Fraudsters have been known to impersonate bank employees and obtain customer account numbers and passwords.

The Basics of Social Engineering

Social engineering is a form of psychological manipulation that involves tricking individuals into revealing sensitive information.

This type of attack is often referred to as “social hacking” because it relies on social relationships between an attacker and the victim.

Some of the common methods that fraudster usually used are phishing, tailgating, skimming and by delivering spyware or malware.

Here’s how they are able to use them effectively.

The Phishing

Phishing is a common method of social engineering where attackers send emails with malicious links or attachments to trick users into divulging confidential information.

On the other hand, social engineering attacks involve more subtle methods of deception. These attacks rely on the trust relationship between the attacker and the victim.

This type of attack can also be carried out with text messages, or by misrepresentation over the phone. This is normally termed voice phishing.

Tailgating

Popularly known as piggybacking. Imagine that you are just entering your office with biometric door authentication or with a smart card.

While entering a guy comes next to you. On one hand, he’s having a laptop bag and on the other has a cup of coffee.

He rushes back to you and sneaks in. This is called tailgating. To gain entry to a workplace, they follow an authorized employee through an open door.

Bank Account Hacking

Hackers use social engineering techniques to gain access to bank accounts.

They might pose as an employee at the bank, a customer service representative, or even a friend who has been given access to the account by mistake.

Once inside, hackers can steal money or transfer funds out of the account.

ATM Card Skimming

If you’re using an automated teller machine (ATM), make sure you keep your eyes open when entering your PIN.

A hacker might place a device on top of the keypad to capture your PIN. This type of attack is called “skimming.”

Impersonation

They try to be like someone else over the phone Or in person. Masquerading as a technician Or a repair person.

They may even act as an employee of an organization who would not arouse suspicion when they request the personal information of the victim.

Dumpster Diving

A typical type of data mining. They would go to the office and home trash container for documents that may contain personal, financial, or business information.

Spyware/ malware

This may come along with a link sent over mail Or messages. It also does come with software that is pirated and free of charge.

Spyware such as trojan horse one installed in the system may harm you more than you think.

You may even don’t know what’s going on with the laptop but someone may have already gained access to your PC.

Preventive Measures

The most effective way of dealing with cybercrime is to monitor our personal data that includes everything that allows you to be in online.

What it means is that, you have to take care of all those IDs and password of any platform, it may be your social media handle or it may be your user credentials of personal finances.

Your email and contact number plays a pivotal role in this, as all sort of cyberfraud arises from these. It’s the contact point between you and the fraudster.

Here are some of the tips that can be helpful in staying ahead of cyberfraud

Conclusion

With the growing trend of cybercrime fraud, people from all corner have complaint having the victim of cyberfraud. Either it may relate to financial fraud or their online platform got hacked.

One of the most common way of being the victim of cyberfraud is through unsolicited calls. It is seen to be occurred primarily to the senior citizen. Where they could easily manipulate them in giving up their financial data.

In one way, the main culprit of all of these is due to lack of knowledge. Agencies and government organisations including financial institutes should organise community gethering and address the issues with the public.

We have seen or heard about the preventive measures on social media, television, printed banners, radio broadcasting etc. but cyber fraud is still happening around.

The best solution for all of these is self monitoring and avoid being in a situation where it could lead to compromise your personal data.