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Over one third of Romanians (39 percent) would accept a job that requires their own bank account to be used for transfers that are actually covering illegitimate activities, thus serving as money mules; the most vulnerable category are people between 18 and 34 years old, shows a survey commissioned by ING Bank Romania released on Monday.
According to the survey titled "Romanians' vulnerabilities in terms of personal data fraud", although nine in ten Romanians declare that they are not willing to become money mules, and eight out of ten believe that this activity is punishable with prison, four out of ten responders would accept jobs which require the use of their account for transfers, thus allowing them to earn some fast cash.
Women are another segment that can easily fall for such scams, whereas men are more willing to knowingly serve as money mules.
The survey reveals that the people who do not seem to take the security of their banking information seriously are the most prone to becoming money mules.
Thus, 86 percent of Romanians easily give out their phone number, 84 percent - their e-mail address and 82 percent their full name. On the other hand, 95 percent would not provide information that would allow online access to their own bank account, 89 percent would not provide the user and password to any of their online accounts, and 86 percent would object to their debit or credit card being photographed or scanned.
According to the cited source, seven out of ten Romanians would disclose their personal data for the creation of a user account on a site - which is the most common scenario, and six out of ten would offer it to a site or via e-mail to collect a prize they allegedly won.
According to the conclusions of the ING Bank Romania survey, the most willing to take such steps are people aged 18 to 24.
The ING Bank Romania survey was conducted by Unlock Market Research on a nationally representative sample of 800 people aged between 18 and 55, who use at least one financial service. There was an equal number of male and female respondents, with 70 percent having a higher education. The methodology used was by Computer Assisted Web Interviews - CAWI.
