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We take safeguarding against fraud seriously.

We’ll help you arm yourself with information to prevent the theft of personal details and money through fraudulent interactions.

Fraud often takes place through social engineering. Social engineering is a fraud technique that persuades people to divulge personal information or covertly gain information that can be used to provide access to confidential details beneficial to the fraudster.

We want to make sure our customers are as secure as they can be. If you’re concerned you might be subject to fraud, please contact us.

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Social engineering fraud

How does social engineering work?

• House buyers and sellers, landlords and tenants are transacting significant sums of money and are targets for fraudsters.
• Social engineering can be used by email (phishing), telephone (vishing), text (smishing) or in person.
• Fraudsters often pretend to be someone with the authority to know the information they’re trying to find out, which can lull you into a false sense of security.

How to spot social engineering attempts

• You may receive an email from someone pretending to be a client or supplier requesting a payment be made to a different bank account.
• You could receive a link from a fraudster taking you to a login page that gathers your username and password.
• You could receive an email from an apparent senior member of staff asking for a payment to be made or for something to be purchased.
• You might receive a call apparently from your bank, asking for account verification information. Real banks will never request your personal information over the phone without being contacted by you first.
• For a physical example, you could be tailgated into a secure building or area and confronted in person.

How to protect against social engineering schemes

Ensure secure payment processes

It’s important to have a policy and process in place to ensure payments are made to genuine recipients. These guidelines help eliminate risks.

• Only make payments using bank account details on file.
• Never update bank account details for a recipient without checking with them verbally. Call them back on a number you have on record for them (not the number in an email requesting a change).
• Ensure payment approval processes are in place. The person raising the payment should not authorise the payment.
• Always double check everything. If anything seems at all suspicious, don’t do it.

Adapt your behaviour

• It’s better to be overly suspicious than careless. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
• Employ your sleuth skills — check the writing style, language, grammar, and punctuation. If an email seems out of character, speak to the sender in person.
• Don’t click on a link if you don’t know the sender. Check the web address is going where it claims to be going, and doesn’t look suspicious, for example a long line of symbols and numbers.
• Always check the email address thoroughly. Sometimes they can be hidden. If the email address doesn’t match the name or the domain sounds strange, it’s likely to be a phishing scam.

How we help to protect you

We help to protect you by following these simple guidelines.

• We don’t share confidential details with other people and protect any personal and financial data you share with us.
• We protect documents that could be useful to fraudsters. For example, copies of bank statements and passports are often used as proof of identity, so we don’t let anyone have access to them if they don't need to.
• If we don’t need it, we don’t record it. For example, we won’t record credit card numbers or personal health details.
• We agree on ways of checking identity with you, and we confirm our identity prior to discussing sensitive information.