Fraudsters made over 1,000 attempts a month at phone banking scams, HSBC reveals.. and it keeps a scammer voice library in case they try again
- The bank identified 17,000 fraudulent phone calls in 2019
- This was more than double the number in 2018, with one month seeing 1,800
- It said it had prevented access to £395m of customer deposits
- Banks have cracked down on telephone banking fraud recently, thanks in large part to replacing passwords with measures like Voice ID
Fraudsters made at least 1,000 attempts at accessing customers’ accounts over the telephone every month last year, HSBC says, with the banking giant keeping a library of scammers’ voice prints in case they make multiple fraud attempts.
The high street banking giant, which has around 14.5million customers, said it identified 17,000 fraudulent phone calls in 2019 – a record – and more than double compared to the year before.
HSBC said the increased number of fraud attempts was likely due to a ‘significant number of high profile third-party data breaches, phishing emails and scam text messages that have taken place over the last couple of years’.
Telephone banking fraud occurs when a scammer tries to log into a customers’ account over the phone, having likely obtained their details through a data breach or phishing link
The bank said it had identified more than 29,000 attempts at telephone banking fraud, where a scammer tries to log in to a customer’s account over the phone in a bid to transfer money out, since it introduced Voice ID in 2016.
This technology allows customers to swap their telephone banking password for their voice, and log in that way.
As well as HSBC, Barclays and Santander also offer the service, which banks say is easier to remember and safer.
More than 2million the bank’s customers have signed up to use their voice as their password, a quarter of whom enrolled in 2019. HSBC said it was adding ‘16,000 customers a week’.
HSBC said over £395million worth of customers’ money was protected in 2019 thanks to its Voice ID service identifying fraudulent callers.
The bank also told This is Money it kept a library of usual suspects, keeping fraudsters’ voice patterns on file so it knows if they try to log into a customers’ account again.
HSBC said: ‘After account details are input a customer says the phrase “My voice is my password” before being given access to their account.
‘This process means there is much less emphasis on customers remembering their password which greatly reduces the chance of them needing to go through manual security or resetting their password.
‘Once the customer is enrolled for Voice ID, the system continues to complete additional analysis and checks in the background as an extra level of security.
‘This check takes place to ensure the registered account holder starts and is the continuous caller as well as cross-checking it with a library of fraudsters.’
The cast of the 1995 film The Usual Suspects. HSBC said it kept a ‘library of fraudsters’ voice prints’ in case they ever try to access a customers’ account more than once
Losses to remote banking fraud fall
Increased adoption of more stringent and sensitive security measures have been credited with slowing the rate of fraud and the scale of losses to what is known as ‘unauthorised’ fraud, where fraudsters take advantage of data breaches and use stolen or phished details to try and log in to customers’ bank accounts.
While the number of cases of remote banking fraud increased 18 per cent to 18,820 between the first six months of 2018 and the first six months of last year, losses fell from £91million to £65.7million.
Banking trade body UK Finance, which provided the figures, said they were a ‘good indication banks are getting better at stopping these types of fraud.’
When it came solely to attempts at telephone banking fraud, cases increased 59 per cent to 5,522 over the same period, but losses increased just 2 per cent to £11.6million.
It added: ‘These figures demonstrate that despite an increase in attempts by criminals to carry out telephone banking fraud, such frauds are being detected at an earlier stage – this is due to technologies such as voice biometrics or those which recognise the different sound tones that every phone has and the environment they are in – preventing greater sums of money from being stolen.’
HSBC’s Kerri-Anne Mills said: ‘The introduction of Voice ID has not only made it much more convenient for customers accessing their accounts, it has also been instrumental in stopping more attempts at telephone fraud than ever before, protecting customers’ money.
‘We are now enrolling around 16,000 customers in Voice ID each week and the technology continues to be instrumental in the fight against fraud, providing a library of fraudsters’ voice prints to cross check against new incoming calls.’
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