An ever-increasing number of citizens who are Raiffeisen Bank clients are publicly denouncing on social networks an alarming situation; the disappearance of money from their Raiffeisen Bank accounts.
Capital was able to verify the accounts of some of them, from whom various amounts of money were taken without any action or purchase being made. The amounts taken range from 500 euros and possibly even more.
In a case verified by Kapital, a citizen was robbed of 50 thousand lek, or over 500 euros. This citizen had a balance of 100 thousand lek in his account, from the last transaction.
Today, this citizen made a transaction worth approximately 10 euros or about 1,100 lekë. After making this purchase, he received an SMS from Raiffeisen stating that his account balance was less than 50,000 lekë.
So, although he only spent 1 thousand lek on the purchase, according to the message sent by Raiffeisen, about 50 thousand lek, or about 540 euros, disappeared from his account.
In parallel, dozens of other citizens have reported the same phenomenon on social networks, where they have had amounts ranging from 500 to 1 thousand euros taken from their accounts.
All these citizens report that they have tried dozens of times to contact the bank about the loss of their money, Raiffeisen has not responded, as the lines offered for customer contact are not answered.
Capital has learned that Raiffeisen is under a cyber attack, through which citizens' money is being taken.
Just two days ago, the bank announced through an official message to its customers that it is facing "smishing"-type cyberattacks, which steal customer data through fraudulent SMS messages.
It is not known whether the customers who are reporting the loss of money have fallen prey to these attacks. But what is certain is that Raiffeisen has security breaches, not only for customer data but also for their money.
Of course, in these cases, the bank fully compensates the money taken from citizens.
But the fall of one of the country's most important banks to a cyberattack of this magnitude once again raises the question of how prepared Albanian banks are for the new reality of digitalization and whether they have invested enough to guarantee the security of their customers./ Kapital