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ZIP IT! That’s the advice of a police chief if you want to keep your bank account in check … and that’s not just your purse, wallet or card holder, your mouth too!
Hidd Police Station head Colonel Dr Osama Bahar has urged people not to trust anybody with their Personal Identification Number (PIN) no matter who it is, and to change it should they have already let the information slip out.
The warning comes as officers deal with a growing number of consumers who have discovered money withdrawn from their accounts without authorisation.
Col Dr Bahar yesterday spoke on the Interior Ministry’s Al Aman programme on social media, where he cited an incident involving a Bahraini victim who lost a sizable chunk of his money.
“A citizen filed a case stating that several amounts of money had been withdrawn from his bank card at different locations across Bahrain,” he said. “In total, he lost around BD1,000. The surprising part for him was that the card was still in his wallet, it was never stolen.
“This raises the question, who would the suspect even be in this case? It is not easy to find out.”
In order to prevent this incident from occurring, Col Dr Bahar stated that people should keep their PIN strictly confidential and never share it with anybody, no matter who it is.
“Let’s stop the same situation from happening to you,” he urged.“If you feel like you have trusted people around you and have given them your PIN for whatever reason, change it immediately.
“Do this to protect your money so that you do not end up filing a case about sums being withdrawn while the card is still in your possession.”
Col Dr Bahar
It’s not unknown for family members to make a withdrawal without permission and criminals use various deceptive techniques to obtain a PIN. They may discreetly observe victims entering them at ATMs, point-of-sale terminals, or other payment machines.
Once the PIN is noted, they might steal the associated credit or debit card through pickpocketing or theft to complete the unauthorised transaction.
Some criminals use elaborate scams to convince victims to reveal their PIN directly. For example, they might pose as a bank employee needing the code for a spurious ‘verification’ or ‘security update’.
The GDN reported in October that a domestic worker took advantage of her employer’s visit to hospital to transfer a total of BD778 from the woman’s account to her family in Ethiopia.
The court heard that she took advantage of her employer’s hospital appointment as an opportunity to get into her BenefitPay and wire over funds, as she had memorised the phone and the account’s PIN.
She has been sentenced to a year in prison and fined BD1,000 for illicitly accessing another person’s private online banking facility without consent and taking money through deceitful means.
People who have reason to believe that their PIN has been compromised should act quickly to prevent financial loss.
The most important steps are to contact the bank to block the card or change the PIN, and then file a police report. They should also report the crime immediately by contacting the cybercrime hotline by calling 992.
- To learn about the latest scam methods, citizens and residents can join the Financial and Cyber Crimes WhatsApp groups, available in Arabic and English. They can join the group by going to the @acees_bh Instagram page and clicking on the link in the bio.
nader@gdnmedia.bh
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