E-Business
Financial E-mail Spam Soars
Financial scammers’ activities seem to be increasing in spite of effort by stakeholders in the e-payment sector of the economy to educate people on their antis. Last week, some scammers sent out e-mails to several people claiming that the message is from Interswitch, major card switching platform operator, requesting them to register their ATM cards online.
“Attention Card Holder, This is to notify you that our services are being upgraded to a new, better and more secured system . You are now required to CLICK HERE and register all your DEBIT CARDS, X-CHANGE CARDS, and CASH CARDS online IMMEDIATELY so as to enable your card to work on our new servers. Only registered cards will work with the ATM machines.
“Note that in order to continue using your card for ATM transactions, you MUST register your card(s) online IMMEDIATELY BY CLICKING HERE .If you do not register your ATM card(s) immediately, you will no longer be able to use your cards with the ATM machines or for ATM transactions and your card(s) will be cancelled or terminated.
Adhere to this instruction on receiving this message and click here immediately to register your card. Our goal is to satisfy all our customers need.
InterSwitch Nigeria Limited.”
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek investigations reveal that the said message did not emanate from InterSwitch or any of its agents as the company is not working on its server as claimed by the scammers. More so, the e-mail address of the message is not the correct email and website of InterSwitch Nigeria.
Elsewhere, Antivirus vendor MessageLabs reports that there have been enormous finance-related spams in the first seven days of the year.
MessageLabs is part of security vendor Symantec which bought the firm last October for $695 million.
Where these spams made up 3.1 percent of all spam in the first week of January 2008, they constituted 10.2 percent of all spam in the first week of this year. These phony email spams have subject lines congratulating recipients on winning a lottery, for example.
In a related development, 419 scams, which are e-mails from senders in Nigeria seeking to fleece their recipients, often by claiming the senders have millions of dollars in bank accounts they cannot get to and offering the recipients access to those accounts in exchange for money, have become more sophisticated, said MessageLabs.
The growth in finance-related spams began during the credit crisis towards the end of last year, according to the MessageLabs 2008 annual security report.
This year is expected to be a bonanza year for cybercriminals, as governments are kept busy grappling with economic issues and economies tank during the recession.
“Spammers, particularly these spammers, are taking advantage of the poor economic climate, because people are desperate,” Matt Sergeant, senior anti-spam technologist at MessageLabs, commented.
Such spammers tend to use hacked Webmail accounts, either through cracking somebody’s password and using that account, or creating several free Webmail accounts on Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Hotmail services, Sergeant explained.
“We’ve seen a rise in the number of fake Webmail accounts being created on all these services,” he added.
Meanwhile, the 419 spam messages have become briefer and better constructed, now requiring recipients to reply to them for additional details on monetary transactions instead of laying out all the information in the body of the e-mail.
That is because the number of 419s is increasing, Sergeant said. He predicts that the number of financial-related spams will level off and remain at about 10 percent of all e-mail because it is difficult to send as they are all manually typed in.
Gartner predicts that by 2028, 75 percent of enterprise software engineers will use Artificial Intelligence (AI) code assistants, up from less than 10 percent, currently.
According to a Gartner poll of 598 global respondents conducted in the third quarter of 2023, 63 percent of organisations are now testing, deploying, or have previously implemented AI code assistants.
AI code assistants provide for more capabilities than only code development and completion, notes the research firm.
According to Gartner, the use of AI code assistants can lead to higher work satisfaction and retention, resulting in lower turnover costs.
Philip Walsh, senior principal analyst at Gartner, comments: “Software engineering leaders must determine ROI and build a business case as they scale their rollouts of AI code assistants.
“However, traditional ROI frameworks steer engineering leaders toward metrics centred on cost reduction. This narrow perspective fails to capture the full value of AI code assistants.”
Gartner notes that software engineering leaders must “reframe the ROI conversation from cost reduction to value generations”.
Walsh adds: “Calculating time savings on code generation is a good place to begin building a more robust value story. To convey the full enterprise value story for AI code assistants, software engineering leaders should connect value enablers to impacts, and then analyse the overall return to the organisation.”
National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has said that the planned national ID card will be issued to applicants by their banks.
NIMC said it is working with the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) to deliver the cards to applicants.
“The card will be issued through the applicants’ respective banks in line with existing protocols with the issuance of the Debit/Credit cards,” the agency said at the weekend update on its official X handle.
KEY FACTS ABOUT THE PROPOSED NEW GENERAL MULTIPURPOSE NATIONAL IDENTITY CARD
- The new National ID Card is a single, convenient, and General multipurpose card (GMPC) , eliminating the need for multiple cards—not three.
- The single GMPC has multiple use cases:…
— NIMC (@nimc_ng) April 12, 2024
It said applicants need to request their cards with their NIN “through the self-service online portal, NIMC offices, or their respective banks”.
“The card will be powered by the AFRIGO card scheme, an indigenous scheme powered by NIBSS,” NIMC said.
“The card can be picked up by holders at the designated center or delivered to the applicants at the requested location at an extra cost to be borne by the applicants,” the update read.
National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has said that the new national Identity card, powered by AfriGo Card, is a single card with multiple services.
NIMC made the clarification against the confusion and criticisms that have trailed the AfriGo Card , touted as a National Domestic Card Scheme.
NIMC is launching the AfriGo Card, in collaboration with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigeria Inter-bank Settlement System (NIBSS), and has had appointed SecureID, a Lagos headquartered company to manufacture the Card Scheme
Making clarification on the card, Kayode Adegoke, head of Corporate Communications of the NIMC, said the General multipurpose card (GMPC) will eliminate the need for multiple cards.
“The new National ID Card is a single, convenient, and General multi-purpose card (GMPC), eliminating the need for multiple cards—not three.
“The single GMPC has multiple use cases: Payments/Financial, Government intervention/services, travel, etc.
“The National Identity Management Commission is working with the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System to deliver the payment and financial use cases.
“The card will be powered by the AFRIGO card scheme, an indigenous scheme powered by NIBSS. Applicants for the card will have to request with their NIN through the self-service online portal, NIMC offices, or their respective banks.
“The card will be issued through the applicants’ respective banks, in line with existing protocols with the issuance of the Debit/Credit cards.
“The card can be picked up by holders at the designated centre or delivered to the applicants at the requested location at an extra cost to be borne by the applicants,” he said.
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