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by CoUHKT57BSe 1324 days ago
Yes I understand what everyone is saying, that giving out the account number is not dangerous in itself and that businesses all over the world do it so they can accept payments, but generally the advice given to individuals is not to give out those details to random strangers (not because they can then take money out of it, but more likely use it for further phishing or whatever). My only point was that the message I originally replied to went totally against this general advice so I couldn't see it being a huge game changer as they had implied.
1 comments
rocketbop 1324 days ago
Irish here and I can't recall ever hearing that advice... I can remember banks saying things like that they'll never ask you for your pin number.
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CoUHKT57BSe 1323 days ago
Fine, here is a direct example, from the Bank of Ireland security website: https://www.bankofireland.com/security-zone/fraudster-tactic... "They may claim that your account has been compromised and ask you for your bank card or bank account details"

The GENERAL (I will super emphasize this word this time - G.E.N.E.R.A.L) advice from financial institutions for a very long time has been that scammers want your personal information, so to stay safe you should not give bank info to strangers. They also reccommend avoiding bank transfers, money grams and other such things and only using secure card payments.

Again, this is GENERAL advice, if someone wants someone else to send them money they can of course give them their account number and get the money transfered, I never said there was anything wrong with bank transfers, just that the GENERAL advice is to avoid them, they are often associated with scammers.

There was a prank call show on tv about 10 years ago called fonejacker (UK tv) and one of the characters used to ring people up and ask for their bank account details (example sketch here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA3zhzT1wDo ) and funnily enough, no one that I recall ever gave them out.

If 2 people want to make a transaction via bank transfer they can, but the GENERAL advice has always been to avoid them and don't be handing out bank details to strangers. Obviously, "dont give bank details to strangers" is not an exact quote from a financial institution, it is just the GENERAL theme of the overall advice to avoid being scammed.

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