Lloyds Bank has rolled out a fraud prevention system, dubbed 'the Rat', that uses behavioural analysis to spot crooks and freeze them out of victims' accounts before they can make off with any money.
The Rat employs behavioural analysis to build a detailed profile of how a customer uses internet banking - for example how they usually move around the screen, or the time it takes them to enter their personal details.
This biometric data is combined in real-time with software which can detect if remote access is being used to access the customer’s computer. Finally, Lloyds says that it looks for a "secret sign" - an unnamed thing that fraudsters do that gives them away.
If The Rat spots the tell-tale signs of fraud, Lloyds will freeze the customer’s account, preventing any funds from being lost, and contact the customer.
Lloyds says that since being introduced late last year, The Rat has already prevented more than 1900 customers falling victim to a scam.
Paul Davis, retail fraud director, Lloyds, says: "We’ve used the latest technology - biometrics, big data and artificial intelligence - long before these were even buzzwords, building our fraud-fighting armoury to give us an edge over the crooks.
"One of our latest advances has been using these three detection tactics together. Individually, they are all good spotting fraudsters, but when combined, we can spot more fraud more quickly and disrupt fewer genuine transactions."