Royal Bank of Scotland : encourages protection against fraud on ‘Take Five Day’

Alasdair MacFarlane, Head of Fraud Prevention and Response, Royal Bank of Scotland, said: 'Scammers are all too convincing and work round the clock to persuade their victims to part with their money. We have hundreds of people working 24/7 to detect and stop fraud, but it's very important that, as individuals and businesses, we know how to protect ourselves. We provide security advice to our customers regularly and today we're encouraging them to Take Five minutes to think before they act on financial requests, or hand over their secure information.'

Take Five Day is part of the Take Five campaign, launched by FFA UK and backed by all major banks and key financial services providers across the UK. Launching today with a national day for fraud awareness, it aims to put consumers and businesses back in control with straight forward advice to help prevent financial fraud.

More advice on how people can protect themselves and their loved ones from fraud, including campaign materials and business advice, can be found on the Take Five website.

Royal Bank of Scotland top five scams explained:

1. Goods not received: Occurs when a customer pays for goods and services but does not receive them from the seller.
2. Advance fee fraud - Occurs when fraudsters target victims to make advance or upfront payments for goods, services and/or financial gains that do not materialise.
3. Spoof payment requests - customer has received a fraudulent request, purporting to be from the Co's Boss, CEO, MD etc. or even purporting to be from one of their own clients. This requests a payment or drawn down of funds. Customer has not adequately verified the instruction and subsequently found that no such payment was genuinely requested.
4. Invoice fraud - invoices that seem to be from a trusted trading partner but are fake. The fraudster typically quotes that payment arrangements have changed and that the customer should pay the outstanding balance to the new account, operated by the fraudster rather than belonging to the trusted trading partner.
5. Account compromise - a caller purporting to be from your Bank advising that your account has been compromised either by transactions, by internal staff or error payments and is now at risk.