Foreign visitors heading to SA for the 2010 Soccer World Cup need to be made aware that using Internet caf'es could compromise their banking safety.
This is according to Standard Bank head of IT security Pat Pather, who recently addressed the Computer Society of SA, in Midrand.
"We are trying to come up with ways to create tourist awareness. We don't want something like fraud to be an Achilles heel in terms of the success factor of the World Cup.'
Pather said most of the online clients whose accounts had recently been compromised had used public Internet facilities to do their banking.
However, online fraudsters, according to Pather, specifically "target foreigners" through methods like Trojans on public PCs or sophisticated key-loggers that register all inputs at specific PCs.
Nedbank head of virtual channels Lee Albertyn says while not all types of fraud take place in Internet caf'es, "public terminals such as Internet caf'es, WiFi hotspots and, for that matter, any computer used by any other person, is a potential risk".
Absa spokesman Deon Oosthuizen says: "Absa concurs that public terminals are a great source of concern for online banking."
First National Bank was not available for comment at the time of publication.
Pather added that online attacks do not always remain online. He cited examples where online "phishers" extracted enough information from individuals to copy and transact on fake credit cards on the other side of the world within three hours of initiating the attack.
'Tis the season...
Pather said online fraud tends to be a seasonal occurrence.
"Towards April, the incidences went up to their highest level, which was why we made certain changes to our landing page.
"We anticipate the attacks to increase drastically towards November/December as this is a seasonal thing. People are on holiday and are generally more relaxed around this time of year.'
Nedbank's Albertyn agrees: "We do see online fraud as being seasonal with spikes during certain times of the year. The general trend is that it increases towards the end of the year."
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