PTSB has seen a 55% reduction in the number of customers responding to fake websites following the introduction of PTSB Protect last year, despite a 13% increase in the number of fake websites being created.
PTSB Protect, a global banking first, helps to prevent customers falling victim to fraudulent scams by alerting them if they receive a text message containing a fraudulent link or blocking them from accessing a suspicious website on their mobile device.
As PTSB Protect is an opt-in service, the Bank is urging customers who have not yet opted in to do so as soon as possible, in advance of Black Friday and the pre-Christmas shopping period, a key target period for fraudsters.
PTSB said that on Black Friday last year, it processed over 1.3 million card transactions, 44% more transactions than its daily average. Black Friday is on November 29th this year.
“PTSB Protect is a valuable additional line of defence for our customers and it’s succeeding in dramatically reducing the level of fake website fraud we’re seeing.
We want to make it even harder for fraudsters, by encouraging all our customers to opt in for this feature if they haven’t done so already. It’s easy to do through the settings feature in our app and only takes a few seconds. The people in our branches and our phone-based services will be happy to help them if they need it.
With scams getting more sophisticated, consumers need to continue to be on their guard more than ever. PTSB Protect allows us to protect our customers before their accounts can become compromised and that’s precisely what the fraudsters don’t want.”
PTSB Reflecting Ireland research shows that 71% of people report having ever experienced attempted financial fraud, with 27% falling victim to it, this rises to over a third of younger adults (36%).
The Bank is asking customers to take a number of steps to protect themselves from fraud when doing business online. These include:
PTSB Protect compares links received or accessed on a customer’s phone against a known blocklist of links which pose as legitimate websites in order to deceptively obtain a customer’s personal or banking details.
Where a link matches an entry on the blocklist – which is maintained and updated daily by the Bank– the website will either be blocked or an alert will be sent to the customer.
PTSB Protect will scan incoming texts to the customer’s phone regardless of whether they are using the banking app at the time or not. The bank has no access itself to the information contained on the customer’s phone.
As the functionality requires additional access to browser and text message content, customers will be required to opt-in to enable the new feature.
PTSB was the first bank in the world to integrate this type of feature into its mobile banking app. It worked in partnership with Expleo, a global technology, engineering and consulting service provider to introduce the feature.
Notes to Editors:
Once PTSB Protect is enabled on Android devices, the feature will alert customers when a fraudulent website is present in a text message. On iPhone devices, the PTSB app will essentially act as a content blocker to prevent customers from visiting known fraud sites.
PTSB reminds customers that the bank never includes links in text messages and never asks for security information when they call a customer. In the event of suspicious activity, we will only ever ask the customer to respond by replying with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, or by contacting the bank’s dedicated team on a 24-hour phone number.
