MSE News: Santander refuses to refund pensioner tricked out of £40,000 life savings

Cornucopia

There is of course a third way that is somewhere between believing that either the Banks are infallible or that that they should be liable for customer carelessness.

That is to believe and expect that the Banks should take reasonable care with customers' funds and should offer reasonable protection against carelessness insofar as it is practical and cost-effective to do so.

The "Bill Payment"/Standing Order setup process is incredibly weak in terms of protection from simple, foreseeable transcription errors, never mind intentional fraud. In fact, I would say that its usefulness is diminished substantially by the inherent weakness of the process, so much so that I am very reluctant to create any new instruction without the opportunity to make a test transaction.

It's also a common misunderstanding of people criticising customers losing funds that the Banking system is completely blameless. That's not true (certainly of thefts within the UK) in that the Banks' processes for confirmation of ID and ongoing security of accounts has been compromised at the recipient account.

We can only wonder how many compromised accounts are out there, waiting to be used for the purposes of fraud.

amanita

Cornucopia wrote: »

...
The "Bill Payment"/Standing Order setup process is incredibly weak in terms of protection from simple, foreseeable transcription errors, never mind intentional fraud. In fact, I would say that its usefulness is diminished substantially by the inherent weakness of the process, so much so that I am very reluctant to create any new instruction without the opportunity to make a test transaction.
...

As a charity treasurer, I get very nervous when inputting account numbers for faster payments- I check, double check, and then read the last four digits off the bill for the card reader instead of off the screen.

I still get frightened that I'll get it wrong one day and lose £0000s... I do wish they'd check payee name as well. Can't be that hard to just match surname!

I think this is why most of my contemporaries stick with cheques, annoying as they are.

POPPYOSCAR

amanita wrote: »

As a charity treasurer, I get very nervous when inputting account numbers for faster payments- I check, double check, and then read the last four digits off the bill for the card reader instead of off the screen.

I still get frightened that I'll get it wrong one day and lose £0000s... I do wish they'd check payee name as well. Can't be that hard to just match surname!

I think this is why most of my contemporaries stick with cheques, annoying as they are.

I agree.

I also double check the account numbers input by the bank teller before I sign, as twice now they have put incorrect information in.

Cornucopia

pinkdalek wrote: »

What next? Police being sued and ordered to refund public losses as they are not there 24/7 to protect homes from burglaries?

You'd have a point if the Police were providing the getaway car.

p00hsticks

ceredigion wrote: »

The lady on Money Box was feeding in the OTP to setup new payee when she was asked to by the fraudsters. Then blames the bank.


About 1:44 in
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b087p2k4

Having lsitened to this program at the time, I think it was suggested that there should be a delay of a few days between setting up a new payee and being able to transfer large amounts of money across to them.

This seems a sensible step towards preventing such frauds. Although I hope I'd never get caught out by such a scam, online hacking seems to be more and more prevalent and it does frighten me how quickly accounts can currently be drained of very large amounts of money online.

hoc

Has MSE gone tabloid?

bigadaj

hoc wrote: »

Has MSE gone tabloid?

It always was.

grumbler

Moneyineptitude wrote: »

Instead of unwisely demanding Banks should refund customers who fall victim to such scams, MSE should be publishing articles about how to avoid the scams in the first place.
...

pinkdalek wrote: »

Really why does MSE not share and aid people how to avoid fraud and also highlight how many fraudsters have been thwarted. (Oh sorry that is boring news isn't it)

MSE_/_Callum_Brodie wrote:

For help staying safe online, see 30+ Ways to Stop Scams.

...................

grumbler

tgroom57 wrote: »

...The only niggling worry for me is that the article claims the smisher had the victims log-in details. It's not clear how that happened.

Keyloggers are so common, that most banks use dropdown menus instead of keyboard input. And, to be fair to the victim, Santander's login process is the weakest in this respect. And, as soon as the fraudster can login, he gets access to the information that can be easily used to scam the possible victim later.

grumbler

bigadaj wrote: »

It always was.

I don't think so.
IMO, this started with claiming campaign, then worsened after acquisition by Moneysupermarket.