TOKYO: Banks in Japan reported losing 1,544 million yen ($12.8 million) in the first half of 2015 to online fraudsters who stole IDs and passwords, down some 300 million yen from a year earlier, the National Police Agency said Thursday.
But the latest figure represented an increase of about 500 million yen from the second half of 2014, according to the agency. In 2014, such losses amounted to an annual record of 2.9 billion yen.
An agency official pointed out that the level of fraud losses remained high, urging online banking users to update their antivirus software and avoid using the same IDs and passwords for different accounts.
In the January-June period, fraud losses were reported by a total of 144 financial institutions in 41 out of Japan’s 47 prefectures, with “shinkin” cooperative banks accounting for the largest number of 77, followed by regional banks at 34, agricultural cooperatives at 14 and city banks at 11.
