Paying with your mobile phone is increasingly being imposed on payments with cash. A few years ago it might seem like a thing of the future, but the reality is that more and more people are using this payment method and hardly have any cash in their wallet. Among the possibilities we have to pay through our mobile phone, one of the most used payment methods is Bizum.
The platform already has more than 16.5 million registered users and has become our favorite way to settle accounts with friends, pay in online stores or make donations to NGOs. During the first half of 2021, Bizum users exchanged 10,600 million euros through the 206 million transactions carried out. The truth is that they are figures of heart attack and that so many millions of people use Bizum has caused scammers to use this popular form of payment to try to scam and deceive people.
When should we distrust?
One of the disadvantages of Bizum is that when we send a payment by mistake there is no way to go back. The only way to recover that money is by contacting the phone number to which we have sent the money by mistake, or by deception, and wait for its owner to return the amount sent. If it has been due to an error we can still hope that the money will be returned to us, but if the shipment has been the result of a deception or a scam we can forget to recover it.
When we are preparing to carry out a Bizum to a person we do not know, these are some of the reasons that can make us suspect that we are being the victim of a scam:
- Request for personal data such as our ID.
- That a public body ask us for bank details.
- Spelling mistakes when contacting us via WhatsApp or SMS.
- Let them contact you in minutes when we put a second-hand item for sale on the Internet.
Bizum’s most common scams
Bizum has become the perfect setting in which to carry out various scams that bring a quick profit to the scammer only by leaving a trace of a mobile phone number. These are some of the most common scams:
Fake buyer
A scam that occurs frequently on platforms and applications for buying and selling second-hand products. There are hundreds of testimonials from people who have been scammed when they were about to sell a motorcycle, a car or any second-hand product with a certain economic value. The fake buyer is contacted minutes after the seller publishes the sale announcement showing a certain impatience and urgency to acquire said item.
The same scammer proposes to make a reservation or pay for the property in full through Bizum. While he is still talking to the victim on the phone, he sends him a request for money with the agreed amount and insists that the person accept it. And here comes the deception. With Bizum it is not necessary to accept any money transfer, but it is necessary to accept if they are requesting it. The scammer asks us for money and if we accept there will be no way to get it back.
Social Security scam
The “Vishing” is a fraud is done through a phone call in order to obtain personal data or banking of the person receiving the call. One of the most popular “Vishing” scams is the so-called “social security scam”. The Internet Security Office already warned at the time of the alleged scam that consists of making calls that impersonate Social Security to charge users through Bizum.
An alleged Social Security official makes a call with the excuse of returning an amount of money, receiving aid or collecting unemployment. The cybercriminal sends a notification through Bizum to the victim, in some cases even the sender may appear as “TGSS” to give it greater credibility. The deception comes when the request that is received is not to make a payment, but is a request for payment. As in the previous case, if the person accepts it, the charge will be made. There have also been cases with the Treasury and the Post Office.
Scam of the “Mandala of abundance”
It is a supposed solidarity movement that is shared through WhatsApp and / or Facebook that promises to earn thousands of euros by making a simple transfer of 33 euros through Bizum. In addition to sending the money through Bizum, the victim has to convince two other people to do the same so that they all benefit, thus spreading the hoax. A full- blown pyramid scam . In this case, the damage is double: in addition to losing money, we are hurting other people, so if you receive this type of message, it will be better to delete them the first time you change. The hoaxes on WhatsApp seem to have no end.
WhatsApp Contact
This same week the Civil Guard alerted about a new scam through Bizum. A supposed contact from our agenda claims an income through WhatsApp that he has supposedly made us by mistake. If it is someone you trust, we do not verify the veracity of what you are telling us and we refund the money, we will lose it.
Of course, in this scam we have neither received the income nor who is requesting it is a contact from our agenda but a scammer who has managed to use your phone number. The best thing in this case is to take a few minutes to check if what our supposed contact claims is true.
Fraudulent calls from mobile operators
The Police also warn us that calls from mobile operators promising offers or a reduction in our bill are also an opportunity for them to deceive us. If we accept the offer they will ask us to provide them with our bank account or credit card. The scammers then associate this data with a Bizum account and since they need a PIN to be able to carry out the operations, they convince the victim to provide it by making them believe that it is a code to activate the offer.
