BE VIGILANT ABOUT ONLINE FRAUD

Dykes van Heerden will NEVER e-mail you our banking details. Our offices are registered as public recipients with the various banks. For your protection when making payment to our offices please utilise the public beneficiary/recipient option with your bank. Our office will never change or amend our trust banking details. Please contact our office immediately telephonically on 086 110 210 should you receive any correspondence of such nature.

Email interception is when criminals steal information such as email usernames and passwords through phishing and spoofing scams allowing them to gain access to personal or business email.

Once these criminals have access to the email account via webmail, they create forwarders and filters to intercept sensitive financial information using words like bank accounts, invoices, conveyancing, transfer, payment requests etc.

These fraudsters then monitor incoming emails on the compromised account waiting for the filters to be triggered. When this happens, the forwarding rule will automatically move the email to the deleted folder without the account holder ever seeing it. From here the fraudsters will use the information obtained from the email to structure their campaign and defraud someone to transfer money into a fake bank account.

Always keep your accounts secure – Create a strong password to minimize the risk of unauthorized account access. Add another level of security – Turn on two-step verification and get sent a security code when someone logs in from an unfamiliar device or location.

Always double check the senders email address corresponds when receiving any payment instructions. For example: Mail received from “Dykes van Heerden Attorneys” (dvh55466@gmail.com) did not come from one of our offices.

Keep safe and remain more vigilant than ever before.

Dykes, van Heerden Inc