Posts have been made on this platform in the past, on the need for you to secure your BVN and not to disclose it to anyone under any circumstances, other than an authorized bank official. The need has, however, now arisen, to re-emphasize the need for you to keep your BVN details away from those who want to use the details to harm you by stealing your funds. Like it was predicted in previous posts that we will soon start to receive scam SMS and mails that will try to cajole us to part with our BVN details, I want to let you know that these scam SMS and mails are now here with us and I just received one myself.
This past week, I received an SMS on one of my phones, stating that due to BVN system upgrade my ATM card has just been deactivated, and to reactivate it, I should call a certain CBN customer care phone number that was stated on the SMS.
I realized immediately that this was a scam SMS due to a number of factors as stated below.
In the first instance, my phone that the SMS was sent to was not the phone that I use for my banking transactions. How would m bank or CBN send an SMS to me on a phone that I neither left with my bank or for BVN purposes?
Secondly, the CBN customer care number that I was to call to reactivate my ATM had 16 numbers! How could this be, when everyone knows that the highest number you can have on a Nigerian phone is 11?
Thirdly, two days after I received the SMS, I had course to withdraw fund from my bank account, which I successfully made using my ‘supposed’ deactivated ATM!
Needless to say that I ignored the SMS as I knew it was a scam SMS, but I will be going a step further by making a report to the phone network so that innocent network users will be spared agony of cash loss. This is what I advise you to do too if you receive such scam SMS or mails. Be watchful and be careful as bad guys are on the prowl to defraud you.
You can also state your experiences with these types of scam SMS or mails here, so that others can learn and take further precautions.
