At Unity Trust Bank we’re committed to helping you keep your organisation’s money and financial information safe. Here we share our top tips and advice so that together, we can make it difficult for fraudsters to attack your organisation and make it easy to detect fraud quickly.
Criminals are constantly developing more sophisticated ways for defrauding businesses. Fraudulent activity and online crime is on the rise so the best way to protect your organisation is to be aware of the latest tactics. Select the tabs below to read about the latest fraud techniques and what to do if you think you or your organisation has fallen victim to them.
Get more information about how to keep safe from potential scams and fraud on the Take Five to Stop Fraud website.
Vishing
Telephone fraud, or ‘vishing’, is becoming increasingly commonplace. With vishing fraudsters don’t scam their victims online, but call with the aim of tricking victims into disclosing information or completing certain actions that could result in financial loss.
If you receive a call from someone claiming to be from Unity Trust Bank and think it might be a scam, do not disclose your passwords or bank details private. Instead, end the call and report it on our dedicated fraud number, freephone 0808 196 8420 so that we can investigate on your behalf.
Phishing
Phishing emails are unsolicited emails which appear to be from a genuine source encouraging you to disclose confidential, personal or financial information.
Phishing emails may contain:
Unity Trust Bank will never send you an email asking you to reconfirm your security details and we will never ask you to divulge your full passwords via email. If you receive an email appearing to be from Unity Trust Bank that looks suspicious, forward it to fraud@unity.co.uk, block the sender, delete the original email and empty your deleted items. Or you can call our dedicated fraud number, freephone 0808 196 8420.
Smishing
Fraudsters send text messages mimicking your bank to convince you to click a link which could download viruses onto your device, or direct you to a fake website to trick you into releasing personal and financial information. Unity only provides a text service for authenticating accounts or payment requests; any other text messages received that appear to be from Unity are likely to be fraudulent.
If you think that you’ve been a victim of a smishing attack, do not reply to it; instead block the number and delete the message. You can also call our dedicated fraud number, freephone 0808 196 8420. By doing so you’ll also help to protect many more people from being affected.
Invoice fraud
Invoice or Push Payment fraud is widespread across the banking industry and happens when a fraudster sends an invoice or instruction requesting a payment. They may intercept emails from legitimate organisations and alter the account details on the invoice, ultimately paying the money directly into another account.
Organisations are also seeing an increase in fraudsters impersonating staff to redirect salary payments. The fraudster creates an email address that is a close match to the employee’s correct address and sends a request to change their bank details ahead of the next payment date.
Here’s what you can do:
Cheques
Cheques can be manipulated into a fraudulent payment, whether it is a counterfeit cheque (a cheque created by a fraudster) or by, alteration (written cheque modified by a fraudster) or a forged signature on a genuine cheque.
Here’s what you can do:
For paying large amounts, it’s safer to choose our one-off standing payments or CHAPS services (charges apply), or register for Internet Banking at www.unity.co.uk/access-your-accounts/ and use our free Faster Payments system.
To avoid conflict of interest or opportunities for abuse, allocate at least two people to approve online payments and set up dual authority for signing your cheques. You can set this up by calling 0345 140 1000.
Robust detection and deterrent fraud policies reduce the level of risk, the size of loss and promote an anti-fraud culture. Start by updating procedures so that everyone knows how to act if internal or external fraud is found, and regularly train staff on fraud prevention measures.
We’ve teamed up with Trusteer to keep you safe on our Internet Banking platform. When you next log in, follow the prompt to download Trusteer Rapport for free to reduce the risk of malware tampering with your transactions.