With online banking frauds on the rise, banks are taking various measures to alert customers on safeguarding their accounts from scamsters.
State Bank of India (SBI), the country's largest moneylender, has issued a warning to its customers regarding fake social media accounts.
"Do not invest your time and money interacting with fake SBI accounts on social media. Follow, tag and interact with only the verified, official handles of SBI to ensure that your comments, complaints and, enquiries get adequately addressed and you are not scammed by fraudsters," the bank said in a tweet.
If you get a message from any of the bank's social media accounts, the first thing you should do is to check if the account is verified.
If you find a blue tick after the account name of the bank, it means that it is a verified account. If you do not find one, then that should raise a red flag. Stay away from such accounts.
SBI currently has its official social media handles on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube and Quora.
In SBI's recent warning, the bank requested its customers not to share their OTPs, PINs, CCN numbers and UPI PINs with anyone who calls or messages saying they are from the bank.
According to an RBI report, India has witnessed Rs 71,500 crore worth bank-related frauds in the year 2018-19. Most of the frauds occurred by way of cheating and forgery.
The report also stated that the number of cases of frauds reported by banks had risen by 15 per cent in 2018-19 on a year-on-year basis.
Cases involving an amount of less than Rs 1 lakh (i.e. small value frauds) were only 0.1 per cent of the total amount involved in 2018-19, said the report.
Among bank groups, public sector banks, which constitute the largest market share in bank lending, have accounted for the bulk of frauds reported in 2018-19. It was followed by private sector banks and foreign banks.