Students have been warned to be vigilant in their use of social networking sites which are being used to gain personal details for fraud.
One of the most common forms of fraud is phishing, gaining details of accounts to then empty them of funds, through emails supposedly from the student loans company asking for details.
Student Finance England will never ask you to confirm your bank details or login information by email.
Much of the information available publicly on social media websites, such as date of birth and telephone numbers, can also be used by fraudsters to gain access to bank accounts.
When quizzed about their Facebook contacts, most freshers have met less than half of them and consider only 25% or less as close friends. However, this does not prevent them sharing personal information on their page:
– 73% will include their relationship status,
– 72% will include their date of birth
– two in five (41%) share their email address
– 14% display their phone numbers on their page.
Heather Laing, Fraud Manager at the Student Loans Company, explained:
“Freshers are often managing their finances for the first time by themselves when they start university and we want them to make sure they’re keeping their personal and financial information safe, especially online.
“We monitor student loan ‘phishing’ very closely and close phishing sites down as soon as students alert us to them, to protect other students.
“Students are often targeted at the three main instalment dates in September, January and April and they need to work with us to ensure their identity and financial details are protected and not compromised.”
More information on protecting yourself and your student loan from Phishing can be found here.