How to Protect Yourself and Your Bank Account From Fraudsters

As the world continues to adopt digital banking, be it on mobile or online, we must remain vigilant when accessing our accounts or initiating transactions such as sending money, paying bills or even purchasing airtime.

Increasingly, fraudsters are getting creative ways of duping customers using commonly known social engineering tactics to mislead unsuspecting customers to reveal personal information to them.

The most common trends include:

• Random phone calls from persons purporting to be bank employees seeking personal data such as your PIN
• Random calls from persons purporting to be bank employees issuing threats that as a customer, you will stop enjoying certain services unless you follow the instructions they give on the phone
• Unknown or known people around you getting access to your personal banking data such as PINs and One Time Pins (OTPs)

To counter this, Equity Bank has put in place measures to protect its customers from fraudulent or unauthorized transactions, including:

1. The exclusive use of the Equity One Number  – 0763 000 000

For all official communication relating to your bank account, Equity will only call you from 0763 000 000. Should your local Branch Manager, Credit Manager or anyone from Head Office or the branch call you, they will only use the One Number. This means that as a customer, you should dismiss any calls or instructions from purported Bank agents if they call you from any other number besides0763 000 000.

2. Verification of 0763 000 000 on Truecaller

To make it easier for bank customers to authenticate that indeed Equity is calling them, the number 0763 000 000 is now verified on Truecaller, and this is what you need to check out to verify the same:

• Green background – other unverified numbers will always appear with a blue background as opposed to the green background
• Equity logo – you will always see the official Equity logo displayed on the top left-hand side of the green background
• The identity EQUITY – You will also see the name EQUITY in capital letters right next to the logo
• The verified icon will also see the verification mark, which is a small tick, after the name EQUITY.
• The appearance of a business badge – The label ‘VERIFIED BUSINESS’ will also appear under the name, indicating that the call is authentically from Equity Bank.

3. Other safety tips to keep in mind

Equity Bank is calling upon its customers to KAA CHONJO! by:

• Avoiding the use of public Wi-Fi to perform banking transactions on mobile or through the internet as hackers may take unauthorized control of your personal banking data
• Ensuring that they set up strong passwords, which include symbols, numbers, upper case and lower case characters. Avoid using personal information names, birthdays, e-mail addresses, ID Numbers etc.
• As fraudsters may access these in case such items are lost or fall into the wrong hands, avoid the storage of passwords and PINs on devices such as mobile phones or even wallets.
• Not clicking links sent to them via emails, unverified social media pages or strange numbers that they cannot authenticate as genuine.

You should remain vigilant, and should you have any questions about your bank account or suspicious banking transactions, quickly call 0763 000 000 for support.