After Sygnia's CEO was targeted in a sophisticated scam, Discovery Insure has said it's an “industry-wide” problem.
TechCentral reported earlier on Thursday that Wierzycka – one of South Africa’s wealthiest women – had taken to social media platform X to excoriate Discovery over what she called a “data breach” that disclosed highly sensitive personal information, including her residential address and details of her insured items.
Wierzycka’s high profile hints at a sophisticated type of scam called ‘whaling’, which targets the ultra-wealthy “Through Discovery’s audit and forensic screenings, we detected a scam where an impersonator called the Discovery Insure call centre requesting the policy details of Discovery Insure clients,” Discovery said in e-mailed response to questions from TechCentral on Thursday. “We identified 19 instances where the impersonator passed the verification process.”
If these questions are answered satisfactorily, the service provider then fulfils requests by the customer, such as reversing a debit order from their bank, or, in Wierzycka’s case, providing more information regarding a policy.Discovery is uncertain about how the scammer obtained information regarding its customers, although previous data breaches of credit bureaus and messaging platforms have been identified as a likely source.
Whaling Magda Wierzycka Weirzycka
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