One of SA's big four banks is trying to combat the rising threat of phishing by offering its online banking customers free software.
Standard Bank, the first to offer free anti-phishing software to its clients, aims to cut down on the number of customers who get scammed each year. The bank did not disclose how much money is fraudulently removed from accounts annually.
It says the Rapport anti-phishing software will protect clients from divulging sensitive financial details to unscrupulous third parties when banking online.
“Phishing globally costs customers and the financial industry billions of rands annually,” says director of self-service banking Itumeleng Monale.
In 2009, there were a total of 500 000 unique phishing sites identified on the Internet, with an average of 294 financial institutions targeted globally.
SA has not been immune to phishing threats on the Internet, with instances of phishing growing exponentially over the past few years, says the bank.
Safe banking?
Monale says that, although banks have spent a great deal of time on consumer education and internal mechanisms to secure systems, clients still find themselves out of pocket when defrauded by unscrupulous fraudsters over the Internet when responding to phishing e-mails.
“The software warns customers if being directed to counterfeit sites, so our customers can be safe in the knowledge that they are transacting on the genuine Standard Bank site and not on a bogus site,” she says.
“Standard Bank believes that the introduction of Trusteer's Rapport secure browsing software will greatly reduce customer exposure to online threats like phishing,” says Monale.
However, Steven Ambrose, MD of WWW Strategy, says the software is only of any use if people install it. He explains that there is reluctance among SA's Internet users, many of whom have not been surfing for long, to install software.
Ambrose has great sympathy for banks, which spend time and money on educating customers about the danger of phishing. Despite this, people fall for the scams, lose money and then want to sue the bank, he says. “The stupidity of people knows no bounds.”
Rapport is used by international banks to secure over six million customers' browsers from financial malware attacks and fraudulent Web sites. It is provided by Trusteer, a provider of secure browsing services.
Clients can download the free Rapport secure browsing software from the Standard Bank Online Banking Web site.
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