Deleted my online BOS account - but new one still has same memorable information set up. WHY?????

Legacy_user

Hello,

This is not a good thing for the OCD and Paranoid club. Why on EARTH does a brand new online banking account have exactly the same memorable information already set up?

According to telephone advisors, everything about the old one should have been deleted when it was deleted. Their suggestion was 'it must have been autofill on your computer'. Err, no! There was no autofill, and there wasn't even any step in the new set up that included a starting-from-scratch memorable information part.

My personal take on this is that memorable information is somehow seperate from online banking, in the same way that your telephone security code doesn't change just because you got a new account number.

So am I right? Memorable information just stays the same and carries forward no matter how many times you delete and set up a new online account?

Or is something terribly, terribly wrong here and I am about to lose every single penny (of my massive hard earned £100) and brutally hacked in some horrible manner that causes me to owe the whole world billions and billions of pounds?

Please! Let me keep at least £1 for that chocolate I like!

No, but, please - what the hell is going on with this memorable information thing?

Bank of Scotland Customer.

Ed-1

ScotBank wrote: »

Hello,

This is not a good thing for the OCD and Paranoid club. Why on EARTH does a brand new online banking account have exactly the same memorable information already set up?

According to telephone advisors, everything about the old one should have been deleted when it was deleted. Their suggestion was 'it must have been autofill on your computer'. Err, no! There was no autofill, and there wasn't even any step in the new set up that included a starting-from-scratch memorable information part.

My personal take on this is that memorable information is somehow seperate from online banking, in the same way that your telephone security code doesn't change just because you got a new account number.

So am I right? Memorable information just stays the same and carries forward no matter how many times you delete and set up a new online account?

Or is something terribly, terribly wrong here and I am about to lose every single penny (of my massive hard earned £100) and brutally hacked in some horrible manner that causes me to owe the whole world billions and billions of pounds?

Please! Let me keep at least £1 for that chocolate I like!

No, but, please - what the hell is going on with this memorable information thing?

Bank of Scotland Customer.

Your username, password and memorable info is linked to your customer profile. If you open an account and then close it and then open another in future it should still be opened under your existing customer profile and online login.

System

Nope Ed-1. Same online username would not work. Between deletion of the old online account and setting up of the new online account, a message always said something like 'this username does not exist' when I tested the login page. During the set up of the new online account however, I tested the same username and it said 'this username is already in use'. So I was forced to change the username.

And also prompted to set a password. But there was nothing about memorable information during the new online account set up (but I remember that part during the old online account set up more than a year ago). Strange right?

But like what you were saying about customer profiles - the memorable information must be tied to some other system, because it certainly wasn't deleted when the old online account details were deleted. Only the username and password parts appear to have been deleted/non-reusable or reset).

System

Err...wait a minute...WHAT???

Something is definitely not quite right here. Whilst I wait for the so-called 'activation code' by post, in order to actually begin using my new online account for things like looking at transactions/ transferring money etc, I was having a look at some of the other links on the activation page.

And what the hell, man. Almost EVERY link on the page (well I tried two) like MENU or GO TO DESKTOP SITE (online mobile banking by the way) sends you to a page where you can view your accounts AND DO ALL THOSE THINGS ANYWAY?!?!

SO WHAT'S THE POINT OF THE POSTED ACTIVATION CODE? AND WHY AM I SEEING ALL THE SAME EMAILS THAT WERE IN THE OLD ONLINE ACCOUNT???

Let's be honest here - has the old online account really been deleted??? I don't think so because everything is still here (perhaps explains the same memorable information) except for a forced change of username!

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr what's going onnnnnnnnnn..........

18cc

Not sure I can help you but can give you my experience with a different bank First Direct

i switched to First Direct a couple of years ago to get advantage of the switching bonus and then switched away after a year

it was definitely closed they sent me a letter saying it was closed and that was that

sbout 12 months later I re-applied for a new one which they opened but all the information including logon details ecurity questions etc etc were the same as before only the account number was different

I have a suspicion that they hold this information on a customer basis so that when you reopen accounts it is all carried forward

not sure of course if that is what is happening in your case

18cc

Oh yes I have just remembered I had a Santander account many many years ago perhaps 10 years ago which I closed about 8 years ago

i recently opened a Santander account to get advantage of their amazon vouchers and again surprisingly all the log on information remained the same as before

They didn't tell me of course I was waiting ages to get my logon information through the post and in the end when I called they told me I already had it! It was the same as it was 8 years ago

grumiofoundation

18cc wrote: »

Not sure I can help you but can give you my experience with a different bank First Direct

i switched to First Direct a couple of years ago to get advantage of the switching bonus and then switched away after a year

it was definitely closed they sent me a letter saying it was closed and that was that

sbout 12 months later I re-applied for a new one which they opened but all the information including logon details ecurity questions etc etc were the same as before only the account number was different

I have a suspicion that they hold this information on a customer basis so that when you reopen accounts it is all carried forward

not sure of course if that is what is happening in your case

Had exactly the same thing with first direct as well.

Motormad

Had the same with Barclays,switched away to Santander for the Amazon promo then opened a new Barclays for the double rewards and was amazed to find I could log in with my previous details,It even shows my previous closed account.

Ergates

ScotBank wrote: »

My personal take on this is that memorable information is somehow seperate from online banking, in the same way that your telephone security code doesn't change just because you got a new account number.

So am I right? Memorable information just stays the same and carries forward no matter how many times you delete and set up a new online account?

(Whilst nobody can definitely confirm this apart from HBOS....)

Probably, more or less this.

Customer data will be held separately from account data - because a customer can have more than one account/product. This may include the memorable information. Closing an account won't affect this customer data.
Also, your online "log in" account will likely be separate from both your bank account data and your customer data - this is for people/companies that have more complex affairs. For instance if you were rich and had a personal assistant who could look after your finances for you. They'd have their own log in details, that linked to your account (and the account would be linked to your customer details).

You should be able to change your memorable information (the answers you give to the "memorable" questions don't have to be true - the bank doesn't cross check them! - you just have to be sure you'll remember your answers)

Also, you can't really "delete" an account. You can close it, and remove all trace of it from *your* side, but all that will happen on the banks side is that the account is marked as closed. The bank will still need to keep details of the account and any transactions on it for a number of years.

Vortigern

ScotBank wrote: »

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr what's going onnnnnnnnnn..........

Do you also have an account with Halifax? Halifax and BoS use the same system and the same memorable word.

PRAISETHESUN

Vortigern wrote: »

Do you also have an account with Halifax? Halifax and BoS use the same system and the same memorable word.

This was also my thought