Wonga are now asking for online banking login details "to verify" applications

auntymabel

Has anyone who's come across this had any comments from their bank yet?

fermi

There is no excuse for asking you to enter your full login details and memorable data on a payday loan website. Goes against every principle of account security. You just don't do that on a site that is not your own bank. Unbelievable.

Coopdivi

There's nothing about this major story on MSE's News page so presumably Lewis and his team are happy about this state of affairs.

JuicyJesus

Coopdivi wrote: »

There's nothing about this major story on MSE's News page so presumably Lewis and his team are happy about this state of affairs.

But good news! You can use your phone on 4G if you use O2.

Sparhawke

Coopdivi wrote: »

There's nothing about this major story on MSE's News page so presumably Lewis and his team are happy about this state of affairs.

Maybe they just haven't got around to writing it yet, they still have to do their research and cannot just write whatever they want

DevCoder

Sparhawke wrote: »

Maybe they just haven't got around to writing it yet, they still have to do their research and cannot just write whatever they want

Doesnt seem to have applied in the iPhone article

Rosalee_2

Yes this is true and is already being done in Australia, it is completely legal however the way it works is they have access to view your account by no way will they be able to process any other transactions, this just saves you having to submit your payslips at a later date which could take longer to process your loan application. This is legal and due to the OFT strong regulations this is probably the way all pay day loans will be going in the future.

pentia wrote: »

(Forgive me if this is in the wrong forum, I was directed here from satirical website cookdandbombd. This is a copypaste, so please overlook the chummy tone.)

Hello. Not that you'd be using wonga (right? you know it's barely-legal loansharking, yeah?) but I was alerted by a friend to wonga's extraordinary new policy of demanding online banking login details as a means to "verify" a user account and complete a loan.

We assumed it must be a phishing scam using a mock-up of wonga's homepage. I signed up on my own pc with an old bank account to see whether it was for real. It got to the last step, just before the loan was approved:

[oh, I can't post the screencap, hang on, go here: i764.photobucket.com/albums/xx281/seesta_repentia/how_is_this_legal.png]

and Wonga very quietly asked me for my online banking login details as verification (instead of bouncing a pound out and back into my account like they used to)!

This is beyond extraordinary. This is encouraging people to hand over their entire banking entity to a near-loanshark to get at £50 a few days before payday. Without any warning that what you are being asked to type into the page is strictly forbidden by the banks themselves. The scamming possibilities here are off-the-scale if people get into the habit of fulfilling this sort of "request". I cannot believe that wonga can legally ask for this sort of information, let alone use it to log into peoples' accounts.

This is the info pop up:

[again, no pics for me, go here: i764.photobucket.com/albums/xx281/seesta_repentia/wonga_pop_up.png]

I'm immediately reminded of the playstation network debacle and other claims of encryption and safe storage that simply were not true.

How can this be legal? This is phishing via an US-based (hello NSA, hope you liked my demographic profile) API substitute, surely?

pentia

They weren't asking me to "log into my account". They were demanding the account login details in full.

If it was a Lloyds bank API, we wouldn't be having this thread. Credit card transactions sometimes use a verification API, that's "standard practice", and they don't ask for the full passwords.


So. Would anyone here like to give me their full bank login details via secure PM? I promise I won't abuse this trust, and it's standard forum practice anyway, don't you know anything?

dtaylor84

Rosalee wrote: »

Ythe way it works is they have access to view your account by no way will they be able to process any other transactions

And what magic prevents them using the full login details provided to login to your account and do anything they want?

What magic stops this being a breach of the account holder's agreement with the bank never to reveal their password to a third party?

It may (or may not) be legal, it is certainly a very bad idea and leaves the account holder open to fraud which the bank (quite reasonably) will disclaim all liability for.

rizla_king

dtaylor84 wrote: »

And what magic prevents them using the full login details provided to login to your account and do anything they want?

What magic stops this being a breach of the account holder's agreement with the bank never to reveal their password to a third party?

It may (or may not) be legal, it is certainly a very bad idea and leaves the account holder open to fraud which the bank (quite reasonably) will disclaim all liability for.

May as well just give Wonga, their staff or their dubious 'partners' your house keys, car keys, and the right to your first born while you are at it. Would be just as ludicrous a thing to do.

Proves what contempt Wonga regard the public with if anything ever did.