Fraud is among the most dangerous and common forms of threats today. With the amount of data and information available online, fraudsters have made billions destroying people and companies for their own greed.
Sadly, despite the awareness of fraud, and particularly financial fraud, there’s still a huge number of victims every single year. Financial fraud prevention should be one of the most important considerations any person or company focuses on yearly. There are a number of ways in which financial fraud protection can be endorsed. Some services will come along with fraud prevention. In other cases, monitoring services can be purchased or subscribed to in an effort to avoid financial fraud. But the biggest thing is that any person or company can take several steps to reduce their potential exposure to fraudulent situations.
Automatic Protection
The good news is that in many cases, people are already being protected. For example, banks already have a basic level of monitoring and protection. Why banks? They don’t want to have to deal with the potential fraud and possibly having to reimburse things. This applies to both an individual person and their bank, or to corporate and business banking features.
Banks aren’t the only places where some automatic fraud prevention is in place. Many vendors and online stores also have some protection in place. Multi-factor authentication is one of the most widely used ways in which automatic protection occurs. Anytime a login is detected from a new location, websites make sure that a second tier of safety and authentication is required. This ensures that potential fraud attempts are often foiled. What’s more, they will typically contact the proper owner to warn them of the attempted login and fraud.
Basic Fraud Protection Activities
While other services may provide assistance in avoiding financial fraud, it really comes down to the individual to take action to make sure that they are less likely to be a target of fraud. These actions may apply more to an individual or to a company, but really they can be beneficial to both at some level. Actions that can be taken include:
- Check Credit Reports Consistently - Knowing what’s going on with your credit can immediately notify you that something is wrong and someone is pretending to be you. You can also set alerts or subscribe to credit monitoring from credit services.
- Monitor All Financial Accounts - It’s good to check your banking almost daily when you are able to. This should also include accounts you might not check often like your investment account or some savings accounts. Set notifications of sizeable withdrawals or changes made to the account to give you more information.
- Shred Documents - When you’re getting rid of physical documents that might have any kind of sensitive information on them, you need to make sure you are shredding them carefully. Switching to e-mail communication in place of paper can be useful as long as you are careful with your data.
- Don’t Share Information Easily - Many fraudsters are able to pretty accurately spoof banks or other institutions through fake messages or fake calls. If you are ever being asked for financial information, do not provide it. Find the phone number of the institution contacting you, and instead, contact them directly. They will be able to verify if the information you were given is correct or if action needs to be taken.
- Practice Safe Online Activity - Don’t click links from untrusted emails. Don’t give information online. Stay away from questionable websites, especially if they are asking you to shop on them. The most basic internet safety procedures could prevent so many cases of financial fraud.
Conclusion
Financial fraud is a constant danger to people in our lives, and especially in our online lives. No one wishes to be the victims of financial fraud, but sadly millions of people are targeted and many are caught out every single year. However, taking action can make a big difference. Setting up a defense against financial fraud starts with individual actions. Seemingly small steps can play a big role in keeping fraud at bay.