Be careful what you swipe for, because you might end up paying twice. Amid a surge in the popularity and frequency of electronic banking transactions, cases of electronic fraud have shot up 10 times from last year, the latest central bank data shows.
Reports of electronic banking transaction fraud rose almost 10 times to 532,533 in 2007 from 57,766 in 2006, although the total value of estimated losses decreased slightly to Rp 45.7 billion in 2007 from Rp 36.4 billion. Most of the cases involved fake credit cards, Bank Indonesia data shows.
Aribowo, head of the national payment system at the central bank, said Thursday that many more cases had not been reported.
The reports do not account for 10 percent of the true number nationally, he said.
"Not everyone and every bank will gladly report their hijacked transactions," he said on the sidelines of a seminar on electronic transactions.
Fake credit cards and bank accounts can be created by tracking manual or online transactions, which might include swiping a credit card at a store. Illegal computer programs can access the information and automatically duplicate the card and account numbers.
Aribow said fraud could occur at any level of transaction, and could theoretically be carried out by a switching company tasked with processing ATM transactions.
Arief Muliawan, head of the programs, reporting, monitoring and evaluation division at the Deputy Attorney General for General Crime said Law no. 11/2008 on Electronic Information and Transactions was now in effect.
"This means the attorneys can now do their jobs easier to nail the players of cybercrimes and electronic banking frauds."
BI data shows total daily electronic transactions reached an average of Rp 180.1 trillion (US$15 billion) in November 2008, compared to Rp 172.4 trillion a day in 2007.
The volume of transactions in November 2008 averaged 40,400 per day compared to 34,583 per day in the same month last year. (JP/iwp)
| 
|
|
|
|
|
|
|