How to protect yourself from
Financial Scams
and the issue was resolved.
Alison Soltani
Last month, I woke up to multi-
ple text messages logging financial transactions that I had supposedly made on my credit card overnight. I had almost Dh5000 stolen from my card without giving a one-time password (OTP) to confirm any of the sales. I called the bank, requested for the card to be blocked, filed a dispute by submitting a form, and applied for temporary credit to cover the bill when the statement was issued. A couple of weeks later after numerous follow-ups, my money was returned to the card 26
The Source FAMILY
If this sounds familiar, it’s because financial fraud is becoming more common. According to Digital 14, there was a 250% increase in cyberattacks and over 1.1 million financial fraud complaints made in the UAE during 2020. Intelligent CIO reports that 53% of survey respondents were victims of banking fraud, with email being the preferred method of contact for scam artists. I was fortunate. The case described above is a relatively straightforward issue of card details being stolen and used for fraudulent transactions. Depending on the circumstances of the fraud, many people face multiple hurdles in the process of getting their money returned, with some never seeing their
hard-earned cash again. It can be a significant emotional and financial strain to find out you have been a victim of financial fraud; remember to be compassionate with yourself if you find yourself a target of the latest scam. There are ways to identify scams and protect yourself against most types of financial frauds though. So, how do scammers try to lure us from our money and how can we protect ourselves?
Common financial scams Impersonator scams This type of scammer claims to be working on behalf of a bank, government entity or wellknown company. They might