OT: Internet Banking fraud reminder

you home this weeekend?

G'day Moggs,

With my shareholder's hat firmly on my head, I gotta say I agree 100% mate.

The NAB (and other banks) has come up with a plan to avoid these occurences in future. In my bank's case it is via the use of SMS messaging. As soon as the system sees that a request has been made to transfer money to an OUTSIDE account, an authorisation screen appears into which a one-off password has to be typed-in. That password will be immediately sent via SMS to the clients mobile phone (within about 10 seconds). The SMS message includes the details of the transaction you are trying to authorise (amount, bsb and account number).

I mentioned this was the 2nd client of mine who has been stung. The 1st instance occured about 2 months ago. The bloke involved was immediately signed-up for this SMS system and over the course of the next 2 weeks he received 2 SMS's asking him to authorise transaction about which he knew nothing!

I think some of the other banks are doing a similar thing with a special gizmo they issue to their clients (rather than using the SMS system).

Cheers

Roachie

Kind of agree with you there Moggs... In the initial days when this fraud started, you couldn't really blame anyone but this has made the news, ACA, TT and many other current affairs shows on many occasions... I can't understand how people can still fall for it... Also our family have accounts with CBA, Westpac and Adelaide Bank, all oif these organisations have regular bulletins on their net banking pages warning you about it.

..But banks are such trustworthy institutions...

Why is the bank footing the bill? Easy, in reality the banks can no longer afford for there to be any doubt about the security of Internet Banking. If everyone ditched their internet banking and fronted in person at a branch they would be unable to process all the transactions. There are not enough staff or branches. What happens then, increased consumer frustration. End result is a larger number of floating consumers ie no allegiance to any bank. This means there is a larger slice of the pie to compete for. This will require more advertising money and better services to compete and retain their customer base. The bank would need to open branches and employ more staff to meet the demand. That would increase costs and lower investor returns. Why would a bank do that? While it is cheaper to pay they will. As soon as it is damaging the bottom line they will act. I remember reading that the banks would tolerate about one billion dollars in fraudulent activity (this is all banks together and includes credit cards) before they would feel compelled to act. They are commercial ventures and you can be assured they are looking after the interests of the bank and it's shareholder.

I remember seeing an estimate that to process one days financial transactions for the world manually would require every individual on the planet to work for one year. Some phone companies in the US have monthly databases to do analysis of there phone plans, these databases have about 3 trillion rows. Imagine doing 3 trillion connections a month manually. Basically the world has moved on until it can now no longer operate without significant computerization. This is why there is a middle class at all. No computerisation to bring down costs, less wealth no middle class.

Steve

Yes, but banks are pushing us into using online banking by discouraging the use of tellers. It's up to them to provide a foolproof system. It's in their interest also, because if more people use online banking, they then can make bank staff redundant which in turn increases profits, which then makes people like roachie happy as he now has the money to buy a new whinch rope, driving lights, etc etc etc.

Also I take it "bad publicity" would be in their thinking also.

STEVE.. STEVE. WAKE UP YOUR DREAMING...
There is N O T H I N G on earth that could reverse the trend of greed from banks to force them to open more branches.

remember - its all about share holders, bleep all to do with customers.

I alwasy find it funny when people say "my bank shares went up $0.50cents... but they dont take into account their fees went up $100...

Yep, the Bendigo Bank does this with the electronic pin generator. Every time you log onto the Bendigo a different pin is generated by the key fob which you have to enter to get access to your accounts. Even if you were tricked into providing your account details the next time you log on a new pin is needed...Not sure what happens if you loose your pin generator though.

The other thing the Bendigo does which I find amazing in this day & age is offer me a fee free account & the manager of my local branch, Warwick & his offsiders actually remember my name & always have time for a wave or a chat....

I'm not a shareholder & have no interest other than having an account there. If I didn't waste all my spare money on intangibles I would buy some shares....

Brian,

Thanks for offer, but not much I could do with it anyway, so probably a waste of your time to send it.

I've seen that happen first hand with a solicitor's trust account cheque too. Intercepted in the mail, fraudulently altered both amount and payee's name, banked and cash removed from the account before the real recipient got worried about the cheque not turning up. Bank had to pay out.

If all this continues, the banks will stick their fees up (again)!!!!

Spot on Howard, no bank will ask for your details via an email (or attached link).

Piece in the paper the other day about a little piece of code that gets into Firefox browser and extracts things like passwords and codes sent. Sounds like nice honest folks are at it again there too.

Roachie, nice evening last night even if the Weagles won. Goodly colleagues...........

Most banks and businesses prone to these types of attacks on customers usually have an automated email account setup for exactly this reason.......just send an email to: spoof@ "their respective website address".

Andrew

Nice heads up Sand Man
Never have before but now I will definitely NOT use McAfee for anything in the future....this is the way to get improved service, let your wallet do the talking.....

Don't know why you bothered mucking around with McAfee in this instance.

If you have an unauthorised amount debited to your credit card just contact the card issuer and "dispute the transaction" they will separate it from your correct undisputed charges and request the Merchant's bank (in this case McAfee) to provide within 30 days a copy of your authority to debit covering that charge.
You don't pay the disputed amount outstanding or any interest on the disputed amount while this is occurring.

Normally what happens is that the respective company can't provide the authority and the "Disputed" amount will be removed by your bank with out charge.

I have had charges such as airline tickets appear on my credit card over the years and my bank follows this procedure without hesitation.
In every instance of a disputed transaction it has been resolved in my favor quickly.

Thats what you pay your bank for and all of this procedure is part of the "Rules" that apply to the respective banks and the merchants who deal with credit cards.