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ST. GEORGE — Fraudsters may be at it again with a series of sophisticated phishing expeditions aimed at stealing bank account information from consumers purchasing items from one of the thousands of online merchants hosted on the social media giant — TikTok.
St. George News recently received information involving local residents who had their bank account information stolen after making online purchases through the TikTok Shop.
Once their account information was compromised, the victims then had to cancel their card and request a replacement card from the bank.
The reader said a number of the victims had accounts through Mountain America Credit Union.
The credit union's public relations director, Steve Wright, and vice president of fraud management, Rob Woellhalf, told St. George News during a conference call on Friday that they recently received reports of fraudulent activity involving the TikTok Shop.
Woellhalf said unlike a data breach, which often involves a particular financial institution or company, this situation involves an orchestrated effort by bad actors to obtain customer's financial credentials and data, regardless of which bank the card is issued from, so the scheme has affected other financial institutions as well.
