Financial loss – What should you do?
Once money has been lost, getting it back is rarely straightforward and often impossible. Time is of the essence: acting quickly and carefully can help to limit the damage and may stop fraudulent transactions before it's too late.
Financial losses caused by cybercrime can occur in various ways. They are often linked to phishing, malware, compromised login details, and scams such as fake online shops, investment scams, and romance scams. Early signs of financial loss include unfamiliar transactions on your bank statement, as well as invoices or payment reminders for goods you did not order. Notifications from your bank about unusual transactions or the sudden blocking of a card or account may also be warning signs. You should therefore check your bank and credit card statements regularly and carefully.
The NCSC recommends reporting the incident to the police if you suffer a financial loss, preferably after calling ahead. If payments were sent abroad or made using cryptocurrencies, the chances of recovering the money are generally much lower. Nevertheless, it is important to report the incident to the police.
It is also often difficult to obtain refunds in cases involving fraudulent online shops or fake investment platforms. This is because the payments were usually made voluntarily and therefore cannot normally be challenged as unauthorised.
If you discover or suspect that you have suffered a financial loss, take the following steps quickly and systematically:
- Contact your bank or credit card provider immediately and have the affected accounts or cards blocked. Many providers have a 24-hour hotline for blocking cards and accounts.
- Report the incident to your bank as soon as possible and ask for the fraudulent payment to be stopped.
- Ask for suspicious transactions to be investigated and, where possible, reversed. The sooner you act, the greater the chances of success.
TWINT
With around six million regular users, TWINT is widely used in Switzerland. This also makes it popular with cybercriminals. Fraud involving the service is particularly common on platforms such as Tutti.ch, Anibis.ch and Ricardo.ch, as well as on social media and messaging services. Even conventional phishing scams often end with a request for a TWINT payment. Criminals exploit the fact that TWINT payments are processed immediately and cannot usually be reversed. They may also route money through hacked accounts to conceal its origin, causing people to become unwittingly involved in money laundering as money mules. Knowing how these scams work can help you protect yourself.
- Set your TWINT limit in the app to reflect what you actually need. This will limit the potential financial loss in the event of fraud.
- TWINT is used exclusively via the official app. You will never need to log in to TWINT or enter your telephone number, codes or payment details on a website. Any website that asks you to do so is fraudulent.
- Never click on links that claim to be from TWINT, whether they appear in emails, text messages or messages from buyers or sellers on online marketplaces.
- You do not need to enter a code or follow a link in order to receive money via TWINT. If you are asked to do so, it is a scam designed to trigger a payment from your account.
- Criminals may send you screenshots, text messages or emails purporting to show that they have made a TWINT payment. Always check incoming payments directly in the TWINT app.
- Cybercriminals deliberately recruit people under false pretences to receive and forward money via TWINT or a linked bank account. If you receive money from a stranger and forward it, you may be facilitating money laundering and could be committing a criminal offence, even if you do not know where the money came from.