‘Smishing’: the new SMS fraud

While most people now know to ensure they have antivirus software to help protect themselves from malware, fraudsters are getting more clever, and are now turning their attention to SMS fraud.

As one door closes, another inevitably opens. The battle to lock out fraudsters and scammers is seemingly endless. The UK trade body UK Finance says we are now losing more than £1m a day to bank fraud – more than £207m in the first six months of 2019 alone. As this issue continues to become more widespread, banks are becoming increasingly reluctant to compensate fraud victims if the latter may have unknowingly authorising fraudulent activity to take place.

A large proportion of fraud happens through push scams – those where a bank customer is deceived into revealing personal information. ‘Phishing’ has been around since the dawn of the internet, with scammers using email to convince somebody they are legitimate.

Then came ‘vishing’ – the telephone equivalent of phishing – with callers pretending to be employees from a bank or financial institution.

Smishing – the new SMS fraud

Most of today’s consumers would be relatively confident in their ability to sniff out ‘phishing’ and ‘vishing scams. But now there is ‘smishing’. The relatively new phenomenon of ‘smishing’ is the fraudulent practice of sending text messages or SMS, purporting to be from reputable companies, such as banks, to trick individuals into revealing their personal information, such as online banking passwords or credit card numbers. What’s more, SMS messages are used to access the workplace, to download software or share invoices. In other words, successful ‘smishing’