I thought I was more of an alert guy who didn’t let the internet fool him. I have written quite a bit about the subject in the past. About fraud in connection with Black Friday, about fraud, a woman who thought she had found great love online, but then it turned out that he was just trying to deceive her. And actually about fraud via second-hand online trading. So that I should be fooled thought I was inconceivable anyway. But before Christmas I was going to sell a pair of used children’s shoes. Then this message ticked in. What seems like a completely normal request when you want to sell something on Facebook. But even here I should have been alert. Facebook warns, among other things, that I must be aware of possible fraud. Perhaps I should also have noticed that the buyer became a member of Facebook in 2023. A bit suspicious for a grown woman. The buyer wanted to use the Helt Hjem service, a service I had never used before. The description of how the trade was to be carried out seemed credible, I thought. In step 2 of the transaction, I should have changed my mind in any case. Banks and other trading services always say that you must never click on links where you are asked to provide bank and account information. In addition, Facebook tries another time to ask me to be careful. But I continued. The weird thing was that the link didn’t work. No problem! The buyer promised to fix new link. Several times this happened. There was some trouble with the registration, the buyer created a new link. When I asked if we shouldn’t use other payment services instead, the answer was the same. Finally I got it done. While I was sitting there typing in card numbers and stuff, a colleague came by. – That’s not how Helt Hjem works, she said. Only then did it dawn on me. I had been scammed. What now? Fraud attempt for NOK 1.8 billion On Monday, DNB was able to present its report “Financial security in an uncertain world”. The number of DNB customers, both individuals and companies, who have been defrauded in 2023 is at the same level as last year. But the amount of fraud has increased considerably. The attack sum, i.e. the sum that has been attempted to be defrauded from all the bank’s customers, was NOK 1.8 billion in 2023, an increase of 45 per cent compared to the previous year. DNB prevented most of the fraud attempts, but transactions worth NOK 268 million were nevertheless carried out. – I think there are many reasons for that increase, says Sebastian Claydon Takle. He is head of the cyber crime center at DNB. One of the reasons is that large criminal circles shifted their activity to digital fraud, he believes. – These communities have solid finances and a large network. This probably means that the attempted fraud sums have skyrocketed. That is why criminal organizations are turning to digital fraud – The criminals are in a sense choosing the path of least resistance, says Sebastian Claydon Tekle in DNB. – There is a lot of money to be made. In addition, there is a low risk of detection, or at least a fairly low risk of the police starting an investigation. It is easy to work across borders, which is also a way to shake off the police. Takle says that the penalties are also low – So I simply believe that there is so much money and so little risk of being caught, that it will be a natural development. Ecocrime sees the same. – What we are increasingly seeing is that the criminals are becoming more professional in their activities and that they are purposefully moving towards profit. Fraud and financial crime often generate large profits that can be invested in new criminal activities or that can be laundered to invest in legal activities, says department director for prevention and intelligence in Økokrim, Lone Charlotte Pettersen. – Several criminal groups are now multicriminal, which means that instead of specializing in a certain type of crime, these networks spread the risk and increase potential profits by operating in several criminal sectors at the same time. In addition, the attack sum is affected by which methods are used. In somewhat simple fraud attempts where you are, for example, asked to click on a link to give up your card information, such as I was exposed to, it is about smaller sums. Type NOK 50,000. – Then you have other methods that give larger amounts. For example, so-called secure account fraud, where the fraudsters take longer to convince the victims that they must now transfer all their money to a secure account, says Takle. He goes on to say that the fraudsters’ methods are becoming increasingly credible. The language is good, the links, SMS and emails look very real. More from DNB’s report In 2023, DNB stopped fraud for NOK 1.5 billion out of an attack sum of NOK 1.8 billion. 64 per cent of the frauds were carried out by card and 36 per cent in digital channels. In digital channels, DNB handled 9,723 cases of fraud distributed among 5,010 customers, this is at the level of 2022. However, the attack sum increased from NOK 500 million (2022) to NOK 618 million (2023). The bank’s detection systems prevented 70 percent of the attempts, which amounted to NOK 435 million. The bank observed an increase in the number of phishing cases against customers in 2023. There were 242 victims, with an attack sum of NOK 51 million. DNB has prevented a loss of NOK 31 million. In more than half of the phishing cases, the fraudsters pretended to be calling from DNB or the police. In these cases, customers were asked to provide personal passwords and approve requests using BankID. Phishing, fraud via e.g. e-mail, SMS or fake invoices, is still the type of fraud that affects the most customers, with 2,973 victims. Well-known brands are misused in phishing campaigns to create credibility. Examples of this are phishing that uses brands linked to the purchase of second-hand goods, public authorities, debt collection companies and companies in the financial industry. – How do you work to prevent and detect fraud? – Among other things, we work on looking at outgoing payments where we try to identify what could be fraud. We work with the intelligence track, where we map criminal environments, we collaborate with the police and we collaborate with the media for the sake of public information. Ecocrime: – A massive increase Lone Charlotte Pettersen works in Ecocrime as department director for prevention and intelligence. There, they experience that the frauds are becoming more and more advanced and targeted. It often happens through backers and organized crime, explains Pettersen. – The police register a tremendous increase” in the number of frauds in recent years. The problem has become so big that it has become a societal problem, she explains. Økokrim works closely with the banks to detect and prevent digital fraud. Pettersen points out that criminals are using new technology with the help of artificial intelligence. – Økokrim is concerned about how criminals will increase the use of artificial intelligence in the coming years. New technology creates new interaction patterns and new opportunities, but it also creates new vulnerabilities. The tools make the frauds more credible. It has become very difficult to distinguish a fake inquiry from a genuine inquiry. This is what you must do if you are defrauded The advice for what to do to avoid being defrauded is actually quite straightforward: The bank, the police or other payment providers will never ask you to provide account information over the phone or via links. – If you get a slightly queasy feeling in your stomach or become unsure, stop, think about it and talk to someone. Perhaps they have a little more distance to the matter or their own experience which can help you avoid being deceived. – But what do you do when you let yourself be tricked, like I did? – Then it is important that you notify your bank as soon as possible. Regardless of which bank you have, they have a rig to help you, both by telling you what to do and by trying to get back the money that is possibly lost. And then I would always recommend people to report these cases to the police. That’s what I did. Called the bank, had both the card and Bank-ID blocked, and escaped the attempted fraud NOK 22 poorer and a little richer in experience. But if it will never happen to me again, I can’t say for sure. Because the fraud attempts are unlikely to stop, says Sebastian Claydon Takle in DNB. – We cannot avoid people being deceived. The criminals are getting smarter and smarter, so we have to get away from a way of thinking where everything is just about preventing this from happening, and do the best we can to keep up and uncover fraud.
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DNB is experiencing enormous growth. People and businesses tried to cheat out of NOK 1.8 billion – news Nordland
