Who's Really Responsible In Online Banking Fraud? 463
TheRealStyro writes "According to this article a Miami businessman is suing a bank because of a fraudulent fund transfer possibly caused by the coreflood virus/trojan. He claims the bank is responsible because the bank failed to protect him from known online banking risks. It is obvious that this guy should have had an anti-virus package active, but shouldn't the bank have questioned such a large transfer to a republic of the former Soviet Union (these republics having gained the unfortunate notoriety of being dens of villainy and hackerdom)?"
Those damn monkeys! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Those damn monkeys! (Score:4, Funny)
virus software? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:virus software? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a difference (Score:5, Interesting)
A Wire transfer of 90,000 to a country which is known in Financial circles to be a haven to cybercriminals should have sent up some flags.
Heck, I spent over a grand on a credit card transaction, Discover used to call me up and "harass" me. Why? Because they stand to lose money if its a fraudulent transaction.
Why didnt BOA do the same? Coz it aint their money? Safeguards are only built in when its your ass on the line.
Credit card companies (Score:5, Insightful)
> Heck, I spent over a grand on a credit card transaction, Discover used to call me up and "harass" me.
Several years ago, I drove to the states to visit relatives.
When I came back, there was a voice message from Visa waiting for me.
I called them back to ask what the problem was.
Well, somebody (that would be me...) used my credit card to purchase gas in a US gas station and "it did not fit my usage profile".
Couple of years later, we went on vacation to Muskoka.
I wanted to arrange a dog-sled ride for the kids. Problem is, outside the GTAMy Fido cell phone turns into a pumpkin. I'm also out of quarters so I use the Visa card at a pay phone.
Whan I get back, you guessed it, another chat with Visa telling them not to worry, the transaction is legit, "usage patterns" notwithstanding.
Customer protection or privacy invasion?
You decide.
Next, flying abroad to visit relatives.
This time, I call them preemptively. I will be out of country approximately between xxx and yyy, the card will be used in the following countries, don't give me any troubles.
> Why? Because they stand to lose money if its a fraudulent transaction.
Zigackly!
Re:Credit card companies (Score:3, Interesting)
At least your transactions were not rejected.
A couple of years back, I tried to pay for gas with a Visa and was rejected. When I called the bank to see what was going on, they told me that they block transactions at certain "high risk locales" by default unless the customer calls ahead. I asked them not to reject but to call and co
fscking BoA... (Score:4, Interesting)
Ever since 9/11/2001, the states have taken
some righteous blame for the ease with which
fraudulent driver's licenses have been issued.
Here in the Commonwealth of Virginia, the DMV
(Dept. of Motor Vehicles) now requires proof
of occupancy in the state before issuing new
driver's licenses.
Tale of BoA Ineptness:
I was surprised to find correspondence from
BoA in my mailbox addressed to a person I do
not know, and who has never lived at my street
address. It appeared to contain a booklet of
either "starter" checks or else a loan payment
book. Within days, a second package arrived
that was just like the first one. I returned
both back to my local US Post Office with the
complaint that the party that the mail was
addressed to did not reside at my home. With
typical USPS aplomb, this mail was re-delivered
to me. (WTF?)
In the same mail, yet another letter from BoA
arrived. By the feel of it, it contained a
credit card, debit card, or ATM card. I wrote
a letter of explanation and complaint and then
mailed the entire lot back to BoA's originating
address. No news back from BoA. Then 2 weeks
later, a CS letter and another "credit/debit/ATM"
card arrived, from Dallas, TX this time instead
of Houston, TX. Again, I wrote a second letter
of explanation and complaint to BoA's 2nd
originating address, along with the new letters
addressed to my phantom room mate. No news
back from BoA -- no letter, email, or phone call.
The next correspondence that I received from
BoA was their CS department in North Carolina.
I sent yet another cover letter to BoA, along
with their latest correspondence. BoA never,
ever tried to contact me (no thanks, let alone
any mere acknowledgement of receipt).
The final letter I received from them came
nearly a month later, also from BoA CS, also
addressed to my phantom room mate. My last
cover letter back with their CS letter was,
shall we say, somewhat rude. Nonetheless,
perhaps it was my rudeness that actually got
some attention from these flaming idiots.
Identity theft has been (IMHO) partially
usurped by "Address Theft" in an attempt
by illegal aliens to establish residency
required to obtain driver's licenses. I would
advise readers of this prose to never leave
mail out for pickup by the postman -- drop
outgoing mail at the post office or postal box.
Also, it wouldn't be a bad idea to purchase
a secure (approved) mailbox for your mail.
Times have changed, and not for the better.
My personal opinion of BoA dropped into the
basement with this exchange of correspondence,
and with BoA's totally clueless behavior. I
wouldn't do business with this bunch of clowns,
ever, any more than I would respond to an urgent
"419" letter from Nigeria.
Re:There is a difference (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the bank should contact you to additionally validate the transaction if it might appear suspect - especially for this kind of money. After all, you must have given them a valid contact point, did you not?
Re:There is a difference (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll tell you what... I'm the banker. I'll hold on to your money for you and offer two different choices for security.
1) I take all of your money for you and never monitor your account. The only person who will know anything related to your account is yourself. The only catch is that because I was not allowed to monitor your account, you can't possible hold me accountable for missing funds, and are therefore responsible for your own security. If you want this sort of security, go to a swiss bank. Until a few years ago, they didn't even require a name to open an account.
Or 2) I will have computer software monitor your account to make sure money does not disappear through suspicious activities ($300 at 11:57PM and $300 at 12:01 AM). With this survelliance, comes my guarantee that your money will be secure from unauthorized access, or I will replace the funds for you.
Obviously option 2 is a much better choice for any level headed consumer. If you are worried about the banks calling the police to brand you a terrorist (which is a valid concern), then it's the laws protecting your privacy which are the problem, not the bank.
Re:virus software? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:virus software? (Score:3, Interesting)
The PIN number is no Problem for the inventive criminal. We had ATM's modified with a thin card reader in front of the card slot and a hidden wireless camera over the keyboard. The customers didn't notice the (well done) modifications, plugged in their cards and typed the PIN.
After a couple of hours the equipment was collected and the criminals made fake cards with the same magnetic information. The card, together with the PIN, allows you to withdraw the daily maximum until the account owner notices, which
Antivirus software (Score:4, Interesting)
Coreflood seems to allow remote access, so a *firewall* might have helped.
now, the *real* question: If it was indeed coreflood, did someone (a real person) surf his files looking for account info, did all (most, alot, ect) of his files get downloaded, or did coreflood have enough smarts to look for the account info.
I can't see how this is the fault of his bank except that maybe 'fraud detection' didn't work too well, but I don't know what it looks for. I see idiots like this guy all the time. 'No I don't want to pay for Antiviral, Antispyware, Firewall, Backups, etc'
eric
Re:Antivirus software (Score:5, Informative)
With all due respect for the windows sheeple (not too much mind you), anyone who gets caught in such a sorry web and loses their collective asses in such a deal is only really proving the old adage that PT Barnum was fond of quoteing.
"there's one born every minute"
Well, I don't pay for AntiViral, AntiSpyWare stuff. I don't need them, (generally speaking) with linux. In 8 years of running linux, I've seen one box rootkitted, we rebooted it, installed the fix, and cleaned it up, its next reboot was 9 months later when a power outage outlasted the ups. And I do use a firewall, and I do make backups every night.
This small 2 to 3 machine home system has only had 2 access attempts that actually got thru the router to my firewall, to get logged and shut down in the last 2 years!. And guess what? Both attempts came from my assigned dns server, owned by verizon and presumably running some sort of windows dns server. Because that address was known, it got past the router & its NAT. And thats as far as it got, stopped dead with one line in the log to indicate it happened.
And I do tend to stay up with security fixes unlike the windows sheeple who's probably running a windows box with a generated serial number that would probably bounce if he tried to dl the latest patches from Redmond. That actually doesn't seem to make a hell of a lot of difference, I was reading a message from someone yesterday that had just got thru re-imaging the drive on his sisters computer because it was full of crap and it was infected again less than 45 seconds after completing the boot sequence with the network cable plugged in. There's no way in hell a windows box can survive long enough to grab and install all the fixes when its been re-imaged by the distribution cd that came with the machine.
So when are all the diehard M$ fans finally going to get the message, and start a class action suit to recover their piece of the estimated 22 billion dollars a year that the M$ poor security was estimated to cost the public?
Seems like a hell of a good question to me.
That said, I don't want to hear about how good M$ is, or field any flames, they'll be deleted from my mailbox after I read enough here to get the tone of the message.
BUT, I will drive up to 20 miles one way with a kit of cd's and install linux on your box & spend a couple of hours afterwards drinking (& recycling) your beer, and answering as many questions as I have the knowledge to answer. And I'll leave my phone number in case something else needs an answer. That isn't saying I've got the answer, but chances are I know a place to go looking for the answer.
Hows that for a deal?
--
Cheers, Gene
Heh... Nice rant, but no banana (Score:3, Insightful)
About the time there will be a real alternative to it.
Fact is, most people aren't really "fans" of any one OS. Noone except the Linux fanboys (been one myself, believe it or not) actually gives a damn about the _OS_. It's like having a flame war about whether brown seat covers are more evil than blue seat covers in a car. It's that stupid.
The OS is just a necessary evil you need to load the _applications_. _That_'s what matters. Most o
Woah (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Woah (Score:5, Funny)
Looks like... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Looks like... (Score:2)
I also "suggest" the liberal use of bold and italics in user posts as well. While I have been actively lobbying Slashdot to support scroll and blink as a way to improve the level of communications in user posts, we are still with only the bold and italic tags (and good use of lists, now and then...)
dens of villainy and hackerdom (Score:5, Funny)
ROFLMAO
Re:dens of villainy and hackerdom (Score:2)
Re:dens of villainy and hackerdom (Score:2)
PayPal (Score:5, Funny)
Me: Hello paypal someone cracked your systems and stole my balance.
PayPal: Oh really? Tough Titties! *click*
Me: WTF Mate?
Re:PayPal (Score:3, Informative)
Me: Hello paypal someone cracked your systems and stole my balance.
PayPal: Oh really? Tough Titties! *click*
That's not what PayPa1 would do. They'd suspend your account and the accounts of anyone who has ever transferred funds to, or received funds from your account. There would be no way to talk to a representative, as they do not publish telephone numbers and only autoresponders are "manning" the email server. Should a human-like creature ever interact with you at any p
Wrong on almost all counts (Score:5, Informative)
What utter nonsense. If Paypal suspended the accounts of everyone who ever interacted with a fradulent account, they would be killing off a lot of perfectly good customers. I have never seen any evidence of any kind that this kind of thing takes place. If they feel another account is closely related (like an alias used by the same person) then they may kill it, but otherwise this would be an insanely stupid thing to do. Some people conducting fradulent activity with Paypal transact with thousands of people before they are caught. In most of these cases the buyers did nothing wrong except by letting themselves be duped. If Paypal killed all of those accounts, their business model would die fairly quickly.
There would be no way to talk to a representative, as they do not publish telephone numbers
If you actually took the time to visit their contact page [paypal.com] instead of spewing more uninformed rubbish, you would have found that their contact number is 402-935-2050.
I'm not saying Paypal is without problems. Clearly they have their share. But at least make some kind of minor effort to get your facts straight.
Re:Wrong on almost all counts (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, of course... Paypal would never wrongfully suspend accounts!
MSNBC Article fragment:
Millions of PayPal users received an e-mail this week offering them a chance to receive a little money just for filling out an online form -- and for once, the e-mail wasn't a fake.
The notice tells PayPal customers that they may be eligible to receive payment as part of a class-action lawsuit settlement the eBay-owned Web signed last month. The suit alleged that, beginning in 1999, PayPal unfairly froze thousands of user accounts, preventing consumers from getting access to their money.
In the settlement, PayPal agreed to set aside $9.25 million to compensate users who feel they were treated unfairly. The company admits no wrongdoing.
The last time I used Paypal, there was no easy, or even relatively hard to find published number to reach anyone. From Paypalsucks.com (wielding an axe to grind):
PayPal has so many unhappy customers, that they make it very difficult to find and use their telephone system for support. You have to ask yourself just what kind of company has such a huge service load that it has to resort to such tactics. You should also know that PayPal's hiding of it's phone number and deleting customer's emails was one of the principle issues why they agreed to pay $9.1million dollars to settle the class auction lawsuit brought on EFTA (Electronic Funds Transfer Act) violations.
I also recall there was a WSJ or NYT interview with the founder of Paypal and he touted the limited ability of people to contact the company as a cost saving benefit.
If you don't think I'm stating the facts, look at my moniker. These are known facts! Besides, I was shooting for funny.
Re:PayPal (Score:5, Interesting)
http://paypal.ctyme.com/paypal/paypalsucks.htm [ctyme.com]
The best bit is how PayPal allows you to record their conversations :-)
Banks should not allow funds to be transferred... (Score:5, Interesting)
What the hell?
Why not demand pre-verfication on this sort of thing? Why not give the option to request a phone call confirmation of fund transfers, especially when the funds aren't simply going to Visa or the gas company? Or just allow me to set up a list of comanies/websites that are permitted to transfer funds out of my account. There's no reason the banks can't set this up, it's not very difficult. If anyone knows of a national bank that has an option for something like this, I'd be glad to hear about it.
Bank of America does not.
Re:Banks should not allow funds to be transferred. (Score:2)
Bank of America's fraud detection group called me to verify a balance transfer from my Discover account... a $2100 transaction.
I wonder if this behavior was prompted by this lawsuit or what.
Re:Banks should not allow funds to be transferred. (Score:5, Informative)
When thieves steal a card, they usually make a few small purchases first to test it out before sucking the card dry. Visa was quick to act on this to prevent theft. It is in their best interest to do this. That kind of action is very normal.
Re:Banks should not allow funds to be transferred. (Score:3, Informative)
Supermarkets in the US have credit/debit terminals where the customer
Re:Man presenting card with name MRS... (Score:3, Funny)
> If you've got a name on the card of "Helga Olafson" and the person using
> it is a 6'9" African-American gentleman, you may want to ask a question or
> two about it.
Maybe it was a transgendered African-Scandinavian, (insert obligatory "you insensitive clod" here).
Re:Banks should not allow funds to be transferred. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Banks should not allow funds to be transferred. (Score:2)
Won't work well in the U.S. due to Federal law (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, Federal law mandates a limit on transfers and some banks have additional policies and charges for electronic transfers, so this is a bit impratical.
I had the pleasure of learning about this bullshit the hard way.
More information here [fdic.gov] and here [ftc.gov]. Call your bank for more info.
Re:Banks should not allow funds to be transferred. (Score:5, Interesting)
The technology to solve the problem is available, and many banks use it, so frankly I'd say any bank which does not offer such an option should be held at least partially responsible for losses incurred through lax security policies.
some banks (Score:2)
My paypal/netbank account is confirmed, did it a long time ago, not sure if that's still possible via paypals current policies.
Re:Banks should not allow funds to be transferred. (Score:5, Informative)
The electronic payments within the US (possibly CA also) are handled via a system called ACH (automated clearing house). With ACH they could indeed hit your account such as that. But the ability to inject ACH debits usually requires a cooperating bank in the US (who recognizes the organization generating the electronic debits). Typical examples are mortgage payments, insurance companies and PayPal.
For foreign transfers (such as the one talked about here), this most likely happened via SWIFT-wire. With SWIFT-wire I do not believe it is possible to pull money (i.e. via an electronic debit). The transfer has to be pushed from the sender. So my guess would be that the cybercrook here gained access to the computer (owned by the person who lost the 90K) and faked an online transfer request. Maybe the guy has always on DSL or cable and leaves his system powered up 24/7.
At least thats my perception of what happened here. In the case of ACH fraud, I think the FBI could come down hard on the receiving bank, and who ever generated the fraudulant debits. With SWIFT-wire, its a whole different set of rules when crossing national boundries.
Because it's two different things (Score:5, Informative)
What you are thinking of with PayPal is direct debit, probably via ACH. This is a US only thing and works differently. It's a network of banks, employers and merchants that is watched over by the federal reserve. Using this yes, someone can pull money from your account. However as per their ACH contract, and federal law, they must have permission to do so. If they don't, you file a fraud complaint and contest it.
Just such a thing happened to my friend. He had been with a hosting company for some time, one with an actual signed contract. When it was up, he cancled it via fax notification. All was fine until a few months later, when they automitaclly withdrew all the cancled months worth of payments. They had a bunch of BS claims about the contract not being cancled and autorenewing and so on. So he contacted his bank and filed a fraud complaint. They put the money back in his acocunt immedatly as a temporary thing while they investigated. He sent them a copy of the contract, and of the letter he sent canceling. After a bit more investigation, the bank decided he was right, made the credit to his account perminant, and went after the hosting company for the money.
So with ACH, there's really very little to worry about. Yes, a company you've never heard of on the network could technically clean out your bank account for no reason. However you'd have the money back in less than 24 hours of filing a complain, and a few months later they'd all be doing time in federal prison.
The reason in this case the bank is refusing to help the guy is because it wasn't ACH, it was a wire transfer. Wire transfers are very different. A wire transfer would be what you do at Western Union: You pay a company to make funds immediatly available to another party of your designation. They company then worries about actually shuffiling funds later, your designee can get the money immediatly. With large ones, it can be done directly bank-bank.
So that's what happened here, someone broke in to his computer, and authorized a wire transfer from his account to another one. From the bank's perspective, they did everything correct. They recieved proper authorization for the transfer and made it. It would not have been iniated had someone with the proper credentials not requested it.
So the bank believes they've done what they should do. That his computer got hacked isn't their problem. Now we'll see if the courts agree.
Re:Because it's two different things (Score:4, Informative)
(lots of other interesting text cut for space)
All good points about different kinds of transfers.
I had to make some large transfers (to another country, of all things) recently and can add a little more:
At my bank, unless I do a bunch of (fairly involved) paperwork in advance, the only way I can do a wire transfer is to show up in person at the bank, fill out the paperwork, show a picture ID (that they then photocopy) and sign the form. They don't ask a lot of questions, but they definitely document it carefully, and they do look like they check the signature cards (because it was large amounts, I made sure to use the branch where my account is). If you submit it before a particular time (4 pm or something) they are pretty good about the money being available at the receiving end by 10am or so the next day.
I also looked into setting things up for being able to do wire transfers by phone (they don't seem to offer online, though their online banking is pretty good), and there are a lot of variations on how you can set things up. You have to specify what account the money will come from, and you can set things up so that you can only wire money into particular other accounts (what I was going to do), or allow transfer into any account at all. You can also specify things like the currency that they'll send it in (foreign banks tend to give better rates than US ones, so it was better to send dollars), what kind of limits you want on how much can be moved, who can authorize, etc. At any rate, it turned out to be more trouble (and potential risk) than it was worth, and we use a joint account for smaller transfers that are less time critical.
Re:Banks should not allow funds to be transferred. (Score:2)
Re:Banks should not allow funds to be transferred. (Score:3, Informative)
Better yet.... (Score:2)
Re:Banks should not allow funds to be transferred. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Banks should not allow funds to be transferred. (Score:3, Insightful)
Presume that there are no computers.
Bank of America, upon reciving a check order on their hand-written "drafts out" list, would process it and debit the funds from your assocated accounts in accordance with their standard policy. Until you complained, they would just do this -- because it's what the tellers and pencil-pushers were required to do, by law an
Re:Banks should not allow funds to be transferred. (Score:3, Insightful)
I never remember signing anything that authorized the bank to make unauthorized withdrawals from my other accounts in the event that there were insufficient funds to cover a check.
What you're describing is the bank's right of set-off, which I understand most financial institutions claim--it's buried somewhere in the fine print of your account agre
Re:Banks should not allow funds to be transferred. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not at all. Paypal wants you to become verified so they can make your checking account the default payment method. They want checking to be your default payment method because credit card transactions cost a lot more than ach transfers - something like 2-3% of the total more
zerg (Score:2)
Re:zerg (Score:2, Insightful)
Probably depends on precedents (Score:2)
If we're making fun analogies (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Probably depends on precedents (Score:3, Insightful)
I didn't read TFA, because I don't have TFT
Re:Probably depends on precedents (Score:2)
I'm glad I'm not living in your neighbourhood where these things are foreseeable...
Re:Probably depends on precedents (Score:2)
here we go.. (Score:4, Funny)
Wow (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow, two pieces of pure flame BS in one sentence, AND not even in the article text. Worst of all, the author appears to not even know the meaning of the word "hacker" (hello? Is this
Yeah, if $90K were being transferred to the US that would have made it look so much more legitimate than to Latvia (which is, btw, probably the last country I'd think of when someone says "ex-USSR"). Notice that the re
wtf? "villainy and hackerdom"? (Score:5, Informative)
PS: And, yes, if you're wondering, I come from one of those "notorious" ex-URSS republics (Moldova [moldova.org] to be more precise).
Re:wtf? "villainy and hackerdom"? (Score:2)
Re:wtf? "villainy and hackerdom"? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that you still didn't get my point -- Latvia is in the EU and is not, therefore, marred by rampant corruption or a careless government. Other ex-URSS countries -- Ukraine, Moldova, Russia, Belarus -- and so on have a loooong way until they reach the standards of Latvia (or the Baltic countries in general) in terms of quality of life, (lack of) corruption, etc. To be fair, Latvia has a long way until reaching the standards of the Scandinavian countries, for instance, but that's another discussion.
What I was "protesting" against is simply the automatic labeling of all possible "dens" for "cybercriminals" as such. Some countries are different than what your local newspaper -- or ignorance -- might imply.
Re:wtf? "villainy and hackerdom"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Latvia most certainly *is* a haven for cybercrime (Score:5, Informative)
Again, that's even here in Europe, because it's quite clear to companies here how much of a problem it is, even if those states are EU members now (a status they were only granted less than a year ago I might add, and they still do not yet have equal status as I recall, in a move to prevent 'brain drain' from people flooding for poorer ex-soviet countries to west block countries).
Searching for 'crime' and 'Latvia' (something I did to help illustrate the point) shows on the first page of results from Google that the US Departement of State [state.gov] has even issued a travel notice for all US citizens going to Latvia. The state.gov web site says amoung other things:
"Internet crime is a growing concern in Latvia. Common fraudulent schemes involve both Internet auction sites and Internet job search sites. In the first scam, criminals offer valuable items for sale at low prices on Internet auctions and request that payment be sent by wire transfer to a bank in Latvia or though a fraudulent escrow site that they have created themselves. In this scheme the money passes through a bank in Latvia and is quickly withdrawn by ATM or transferred to a bank in another country. It is very difficult in these cases to discover the identities of the account holders or recover the funds.
The second common scam involves identity theft through false job offers. In this scheme, a company claiming to be located in Latvia, but which has a non-existent address, offers the victim employment as a U.S.-based agent or freight forwarder. When the victim responds to the job offer, commonly posted on one of several popular internet job sites, a Social Security number and other identifying information - needed for the identity theft - is required under the guise of conducting a background check. ".
Just because it's a small nation, doesn't mean it's not notiously dodgy - it is, and it is known for online fraud as well as quite a few other tyes of crime (people trafficing being another that springs to mind). So as a European I'd have to say I agree with the article and think it's accurate in it's assertion.
Re:wtf? "villainy and hackerdom"? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, I heard about that. You'll also note that I did not say anything positive about Moldova -- in many respects, that country is still in the URSS, if not worse.
But Latvia? Come on! Moldovans, for instance, would love to enjoy the standards of life from there. My point was that just because a country was in the ex-URSS, it
Re:wtf? "villainy and hackerdom"? (Score:2)
the only country higher risk than these is nigeria
many companies will refuse to do any business with those countries. it's sad because i'm sure there are a lot of honest people and companies in those countries, but the high criminal activity make it too risky to do transactions with them.
i believe part of the problem is the rampant corruption in government and law enforc
How? (Score:2, Interesting)
Hmm.
My bank has advanced security. You get issued with a hardware device (fits on your keyring) that generates one-time-use passwords for you to use to log on.
Further, whenever a transaction occurs on any of your accounts, you immediately receive a text message on your mobile phone. If you didn't authorize the transaction, you can challenge it.
I'm not sure this guy has much of a leg to stand on.
How? (Score:2, Insightful)
Are we talking keystroke monitors or something?
Actually HERE'S the biggest bank fraud happening (Score:2, Troll)
This is especially true now that Check 21 [federalreserve.gov] is in place.
Re:Actually HERE'S the biggest bank fraud happenin (Score:3, Informative)
When Check 21 is fully in place, you are correct. There will be immediate availability of funds.
Many people will be hurt by this, as it removes any buffer that they are used to dealing with for writing check
Re:Actually HERE'S the biggest bank fraud happenin (Score:2)
Maybe your bank doesn't trust you. Mine trusts me and credits my account immdiately on that same day.
Strong Authentication (Score:5, Insightful)
Over here in Switzerland all banks use a strong authentication scheme to make sure only the owner of an account can get in. My UBS account has a challenge/response system (needs a special calculator and account-specific chipcard). My two other banks use a one-time pad where the same code is only valid for a single login. When the old pad is almost finished they just send a new one.
Simple passwords are just not safe enough on the internet. Unfortunately in the real world the real joe user is just not able to make absolutely sure that no cheating is going on.
The banks should at least take a part of the blame if they are too lazy to implement something safe.
Markus
Re:Strong Authentication (Score:2, Informative)
My UBS account has a challenge/response system (needs a special calculator and account-specific chipcard).
Which makes the system pretty useless in real life.
My bank has a simple userid/passwd that allows me to use it from almost any computer anywhere - but - it has a monitoring system that checks for anomalies, much like American Express.
My bank will allow me to pay my rent from a Thai Internet café, because it knows I usually pays the rent to the same person every month.
But it will not allow
Re:Strong Authentication (Score:2)
The UBS calculator is a limitation, you need to have it with you. However, the one-time pads are just perfect, in my wallet I have them with me, even in you thai internet café.
There is a regulation that a banks has to protect its clients data. This beats the patriot act every day. I suppose even with a allegedly unregulated US bank I can not walk up to the counter and ask the teller to hand me your account contents over.
There is no regulation asking for strong authentication, but all of them adopted
Re:Strong Authentication (Score:3, Insightful)
Analogies always help... (Score:2)
Re:Analogies always help... (Score:2)
I don't know much about hacking but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, the bank is probably still going to win on this, but that excuse is BS. While I agree that Mr. Lopez should've been running a virus scanner, you'd think that they would flag transactions to Latvia; after all, my bank has prevented me from taking out cash at an ATM for far more trivial amounts just because it was an "unusual transaction." I'd imagine that $90K to Latvia probably qualifies as an unusual transaction.
(Unless, of course, Mr. Lopez is really an illegal arms trader or something.)
Cooling Off For New Transfer Destinations (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe that this is to facilitate a few things, such as:
* Easier to rollback "Oops, Wrong Account Number" problems.
* Easier to prevent the channelling of money to accounts from pishing victims (rough guess, if destination account is receiving several transfers in 24 hours, then raise red flag).
Of course, the cynical side of me thinks that its just an excuse for the bank to use the money on the short term money market for an extra 24 hours. ;)
Boris.
Re:Cooling Off For New Transfer Destinations (Score:2, Informative)
It goes like this...
Order comes from dodgy part of the world. The client is told that company won't take credit card payments from that country. Client says "ok, I'll wire the money" and wires in the amount. Client wires $1000 to company and $10 to his cousin who is in the country and has a bank account with the same bank. Money is in companies bank account so the goods get shipped. As soon as the fedex tracking system says i
Why DIDN'T the bank question it? (Score:2, Interesting)
But why don't the banks watch spending patterns? I know the credit card companies do, and have for a while-- about 10 years ago, I had a Mobil gas card. I let my then-girlfriend use it for a while, and a week or so later I got a letter from them about "potentially questionable" charges because the activity was different from what it normally was. I usually top off my tank to get the dollar amount to the nearest $0.25,
Restating the Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, the man regularly initiated international wire transfers, hence no fraud alert triggered.
The old adage still rings true; a fool and his money are soon parted.
Re:Restating the Obvious (Score:2)
Bank should countersue (Score:2)
What happened to BofA $0 Liability? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What happened to BofA $0 Liability? (Score:5, Informative)
This was a wire transfer, rather than typical consumer service like online bill payment.
I suspect that this customer has a commercial banking account and is using commercial banking services. For instance, see this URL:
http://www.bankofamerica.com/deposits/checksave/in dex.cfm?template=lc_faq_wire#question2 [bankofamerica.com]
There's no mention of online wire transfers.
Also, at the top of the page you cited, it says:
Online Banking Guarantee
For Consumers and Sole Proprietors
I'm sorry (Score:2, Insightful)
His computer was logged in and it sent a transfer request. But he, personally, the person who the account belongs to, didn't actually authorize the transfer. Therefore it's a case of bank fraud by whoever did authorize it, which would boil down to the virus writer.
The bank should put the money back in his account and t
Lack of proactive measures indefensible (Score:5, Insightful)
The worst example of this was a former bank (emphasis on "former") that unilaterally disabled all existing ATM cards without warning. But not to worry - our spanking new debit cards should have already arrived, together with the new PIN number in a separate mailing.
As if that's not bad enough, this was back before debit cards had fraud protection. If somebody cleared out your checking account that was it - that money was gone.
I immediately cancelled my account. The drone assured me that my funds were safe, I could request (REQUEST) a new ATM card, etc. I told him there was no way I was keeping my money there - they violated my trust and they weren't getting a second chance.
I heard, unoffically, that a full third of the bank's customers dropped their accounts because of this braindead move. But the bank's new overlords and masters in Minnesota refused to accept responsibility for a collosial FU - they said the problem was that we were all to provincial to understand the brave new world of banking, not that we were well-informed and refused to do business with assholes who could have left us traveling without access to our funds and without warning. (When I travel I usually pulled spending money out of an ATM so it's in the local currency, but now I'll probably use a "gift card.")
Re:Lack of proactive measures indefensible (Score:3, Insightful)
Sadly, they were right. Bad treatment is now the new banking paradigm. You WERE too provincial in thinking that the (obviously growing) bank was supposed to care for their customers. Banks now serve their institutional stockholders (individual stockholders are merely along for the ride) and executives. Everyone else can just take their ban
Fines or imprisonment for security vulnerabilities (Score:3, Interesting)
It's incidents like this that is leading us towards having to be licenced to write software much like architects and engineers are licensed to practice their trade. We may be another 10-20 years away from that but unless software developers get their act together [slashdot.org] it's going to come sooner than we all think.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
All fun and games.. (Score:3, Insightful)
So what happens when your due diligence isn't enough? What if someone that works at a gas station or a hotel grabs your debit card number and does the Fandango with it?
I guaren-fucking-tee you that someone that has replied to these comments would say, "You deserve it!" and list some explanation why we should take hours a day to protect our bank accounts.
If someone decides to transfer all my funds to a foreign country, that should be a big red flag. Or anytime a large amount is going to be transferred to another account. They should have to get verification from the account holder before high dollar amounts are able to go through.
These people I used to work with both had their CCs stolen by an employee that quit on that day. They had hundreds of dollars racked up by day two, on each card. They went to the police, prosecuted, and their banks didn't hold them accountable for the purchases.
Know how the woman got their CCs? They left their purses on their own desks when they went to the bathroom or went on break. According to some people, they deserved it.
Risks and Notification from banks (Score:4, Insightful)
Role of virus claimed, not proven (Score:5, Informative)
According to the article Mr. Lopez frequently makes wire transfers (albeit not to Latvia), so I'm not sure why everyone is leaping to the conclusion that this was done by clever cyber criminals and not business associates, customers, or bank employees. It may very well be, but the article contains no evidence to support the claim.
The Bank is responsible (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously, online banking is not as safe as telephone banking [when not using a portable phone], and no where near as safe as working with a teller in a bank, or an ATM machine. Although now there are examples of ATM machines being hijacked with card readers, and cameras to capture PINs. All a computer needs is a little spyware, and presto, 128bit encryption is rendered useless. And with all the machines that have spyware, it's impossible to promise reliable banking security on the desktop computer.
Did the businessman use MS Windows? (Score:3, Insightful)
Routine Insecurity (Score:3, Insightful)
But this guy is running a machine where compromises are the status quo. It is a regular occurance. I mean, talk to anyone who has used MS Windows on the internet, and almost all of them have horror stories. And there's even a whole industry of after-the-fact cleanup dedicated to these recurring problems. If, in the face of this reality, you choose to run MS Windows, then aren't you accepting it? For Windows machines to be compromised is not an exception -- it's something you expect to happen from time to time. And this isn't something obscure known only to the 3l33t h4xx0rs of Slashdot. Even the most simple laymen have heard about spyware, the need for virus scanners, etc. I mean, seriously, even your grandmother knows this stuff. (The difference between grandma and the "elite" is that she hasn't made the connection that it's only a Microsoft thing and that she could avoid if she wanted to; she mistakenly believes this situation of insecurity is "normal" for the whole state of personal computing.)
Because of this, I think it's reasonable for a MS Windows user to expect their computer to be used, from time to time, by others without their consent, and with strangers impersonating them. IMHO, that's a bad situation, but apparently other people are ok with it. If they are ok with this and have accepted the situation, then why aren't they responsible for it?
Again, I stress that I'm talking about routine, rather than exceptional, security violations. If someone breaks into your locked car and uses it to commit a crime, it's not your fault. If you paint "steal this car" on the side of your car and you routinely leave it unattended with the doors open and the engine running, day after day, year after year.. then I think you have some explaining to do, when the town drunk takes it.
Re:morons (Score:2)
Taking your rationale a little further, one could argue that people should be required to have a license to procreate, and soon, you're putting the "id10ts" on a train and sending them to camps somewhere.
No (Score:5, Interesting)
Phoning someone and asking them if they really did make a transfer is not an invasion of privacy as the customer should already know about it, and the bank definitely does.
I've gotten this kind of call before, and I'm glad of it... In my case though, I really had made a withdrawl in one city, then a $2000 interac purchase in annother city 2 hours later, then another interac transaction a few hours later in the first city.
Re:Should they analyse your account? (Score:2)
Re:Should they analyse your account? (Score:3, Interesting)
Should my bank analyse every transaction made on my account...
Why not? Credit card companies do all the time. A couple of years ago, I put an unusual charge on one of my cards while I was out of town. The credit card company tracked me down at my hotel to ask me if I had authorized it, and asked me a couple of random questions about my account to confirm that they really were talking to me.
Credit card companies do this, because they're on the hook for any fraud over 50 bucks. Banks don't, because they
Re:anyone's fault but my own (Score:2)
Several in-flight magazines have ads from law firms that say (and I'm paraphrasing -- but only a little -- here): "Properly invested, it's hard to lose money in the stock market. If you've lost money, then perhaps you should sue your brokerage firm."
As with so very, very many things, it's probably a good idea to castrate all the lawyers.
Re:member FDIC ??? (Score:2, Informative)