The rapid increase in the use of phones and computers for online banking has created extra opportunities for confidence tricksters and swindlers to steal our money.

Banking fraud can occur through online, telephone and mobile banking. Criminals want to gain access to your bank account and make transfers to steal your money.

Criminals target victims directly and use social engineering tactics to trick them out of their personal and financial information in order to access their accounts.

There are many types of banking fraud to watch out for, here are just three examples:

• Mobile banking fraud takes place when you are contacted by a criminal who persuades you to provide access to or make payments from your mobile banking applications.
• Online banking fraud takes place when criminals persuade you to provide access to or make payments from to your bank account online.
• Telephone banking takes place when consumers are contacted over the phone and persuaded to make a payment or provide access to accounts during the call. Criminals use social engineering tactics to convince people that they represent a legitimate organisation.

These all sound obvious when written down on paper, but criminals are actually very skilled and practiced at impersonating the police, bank staff and others who you would normally trust. They are good at spinning a tale that is believable for just long enough for them to gain confidential information from you that can be used to steal from your account.

The national campaign Take Five* gives lots of information about the types of fraud that can occur, and how just taking five minutes to think can prevent you becoming a victim. Criminals often use stories with an element of urgency to get you to act without thinking - don't let them get away with that.

"Adrian" was trying to keep his children entertained when he received an urgent text message from ‘his bank’ informing him about a problem with his bank account. He was told to ring the number provided immediately to update his personal details. Upon speaking to ‘an employee’ from his bank, who confirmed Adrian’s full name, address and recent transactions, he was told the bank had detected suspicious activity on his account and he needed to provide them with new personal information. The ‘employee’ informed Adrian that in order to process the change of details he would receive a One-Time Passcode which he was to share with them. Moments later, he was told the problem with his account had been resolved.

Unknowingly, by sharing the code, Adrian had given access to his bank account to a criminal.

Visit the Take Five site for more advice and an excellent interactive quiz about fraud.

*Not to be confused with this Take Five.