Skimming: Singapore Customers Affected by Illegitimate Cash Withdrawals
- DBS Bank is currently investigating a certain number of ATM frauds having affected over 200 DBS and POSB customers. Losses have been assessed at 154,780 US dollar and the withdrawals may have been made in Malaysia. Average amount withdrawn was about 600 euros per account.
- Considering the significant increase of online account interrogations, the bank’s servers have been flooded and many worried customers did not manage to connect to their banking portal to check on their transaction history,
- The affected cards have been disabled and, two days after the first notifications, DBS explained that all withdrawals not having been authorised by the cardholder would be repaid within 24 hours: these measures may only partly reassure the customers.
- According to the same sources, these kinds of cases hardly ever occur in Singapore (27 unauthorised transactions in 2009 for 5,400 Singapore dollars, and, in 1995, about a hundred cases after card thefts).
- Considering these incidents, BDS also announces the implementation of SMS alerts to let customers know of suspicious withdrawals or take-outs exceeding certain predefined amounts. This tool comes in addition to its already available means to fight online fraud for instance. We should also note that the number of cases has increased over the days and one week after the notifications received on 4 and 5 January, the number of identified victims reached 400 for over 500,000 Singapore dollars (more than 300,000 euros).
- All the more, DBS Bank is still working to secure its offers. This is shown by its fast responses to threats as they appear as well as by the new online authentication devices it proposes. The bank complies with the recommendations of the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) (see October and December 2011 Insights).
- Meanwhile, the ABS has announced a series of measures to be implemented by 2014. For instance, by the end of the first semester 2012, SMS alerts will concern all transactions above certain amounts and ATM cash withdrawals abroad will no longer be authorised (unless the customer asks of it). End December 2012, the tokens used to secure online transactions should have been further improved. Finally, in 2014, ATMs and cards will have to be EMV compliant and card activation processes will be triggered by the customer through a making a phone call to the issuing bank.