It's no longer news that if you lose your phone, especially with your main line used for receiving bank alerts, your account could be wiped out within hours if you don't take measures to restrict your account and block your SIM to minimize the attack. Reading this post simply means you can take precautions to secure your bank account and SIM within minutes if your phone is stolen.
Here are a few steps you need to take to ensure you are safe even if your phone is stolen:
1. Always lock your phone: This is very important because criminals can use your phone and SIM to apply for a loan and make off with the money. You'll be left to pay back the money. This scenario happened to my immediate younger brother and some of my friends. Always lock your phone with either a pattern, fingerprint, or strong password.
2. Lock your SIM with a PUK: This is very important as it is the gateway to your bank. Not adding a PUK to your SIM is as good as not adding a password to your bank account if it falls into the hands of criminals. They don't need any of your passwords to siphon your money. If you apply a PUK, it's very difficult to hack your account because they only have three attempts before the SIM blocks. It may take several hours to brute force the password, by which time you would have taken necessary actions to secure your accounts.
3. Do not save your BVN and NIN as contacts, and if you must save them, use another word. Never use 'My BVN' or 'My NIN.' You can use something like 'Baby Virtuous Value' or something entirely different.
4. Use different passwords across your devices and ensure they are strong passwords (A strong password must be at least 13 characters long, for example, 'LOANSharkReview2024*&^%'). A 6-character password takes only 30 minutes to break.
5. Always save your bank account number and some details to the cloud. I recommend Google Drive and Google Docs. This way, you can easily access your bank details as many people have accounts with up to 7 banks and may not know the numbers offhand.
6. If your phone or debit card is stolen, the fastest means to block your bank account is to use bank USSD, as calling customer care sometimes may not go through. Also, you may be unlucky if it's a holiday or weekend, preventing you from going to your bank in person. It's advisable to either use USSD, go to your bank website and fill out a restriction form, or call customer care.
7. To protect your smartphone from being hacked, always stick to the official app stores for your apps. Downloading loan apps or other apps may open up your phone to serious attacks. Install internet security and always back up your data.
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