Australian Bank Accused Of Allowing Massive Internet Fraud

from the that-doesn't-look-good dept

Unfortunately, the details aren’t entirely clear, but a report out of Australia from someone says that his account at the Commonwealth Bank was hacked, and that the bank later admitted that this happens “hundreds of times a week.” In response to the charges, the bank responded by saying that their systems were designed to watch for likely fraud and that they caught it before funds were lost 99.5% of the time. That has to be one of the least comforting statements you could hear from your bank concerning fraud. Basically, they’re admitting that hundreds of scammers get into accounts, but that their system only then protects the accounts most of the time. Shouldn’t they be working on keeping the scammers out altogether rather than on waiting until they’ve already made it through? The actual scam in question is not clearly explained. While the say some of the scams involve phishing, this one apparently involved his info being “retrieved from Web cookies,” which sounds questionable. It also involved the increasingly popular “middleman” system by which scammers try to stay even further hidden by supposedly “hiring” an innocent person to transfer money for them.


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