ISLE OF MAN BANK – COLD CALLS

This notice is issued by the Financial Supervision Commission (“the Commission”) in accordance with the powers conferred upon it under Section 30 of the Financial Services Act 2008.

The Commission has recently become aware of what appears to be a bogus telephone ‘cold calling’ scam, possibly designed to obtain personal details for future illegal use from Island residents.

A local resident has reported receiving a telephone call from a person purporting to be a member of staff at the Isle of Man Bank and asking for personal details.

Extensive enquiries have shown that no such calls were made from the bank. No other complaints of a similar nature have at the present time been made to the bank.

There is a genuine entity on the Isle of Man called the Isle of Man Bank Limited. The genuine Isle of Man Bank Limited have a policy of never cold calling of customers to glean personal details.

During times of financial uncertainty it is possible that there will be a proliferation of scamming activity.

Methods of trying to obtain personal details include:

• Sending an email that looks like it comes from your bank, financial institution or telecommunications provider. Known as phishing scams, these emails are all about tricking you into handing over your personal and banking details to scammers. Most work by including special links in the email to take you to a combination of genuine and spoofed websites.

• Phone based scams similar to the above phishing cams but where scammers seek to trick you into handing over your personal details. A common form involves the scammer pretending to be from your bank informing you that your credit card or account has been cancelled because of suspicious criminal activity (various excuses are used). They will then trick you to provide account details to ‘confirm’ your identity.

• Bogus Job Opportunities are usually posted on job websites. The scammer may use or sell your personal information provided in the job application.

Don't be fooled—legitimate financial institutions will not require you to disclose sensitive personal information (such as account passwords, account/credit card numbers etc.) via an unsolicited email or phone call. If you have any doubts, close the email or finish the phone call and check their legitimacy with the genuine company.

FSC reference: NDR/004/2010