It was the week before Christmas and I had not yet eaten a single mince pie. Santa was still preparing to wedge himself down the chimneys of the homes of happy children. And then I had an attack on my laptop. No, I didn’t do anything: didn’t click anything or hit anything or download anything suspicious or unknown – but a nastiness appeared before my eyes.
I immediately took the laptop to my daughter, who sent it to her computer Mr Fixit. This clever person spent a day and a half dealing to the virus, salvaging my data and returning everything to factory settings. I was greatly thankful and out of pocket but I am still re-setting things. That was issue one.
Issue two was more complicated, as I am profoundly deaf and unable to use the telephone to get help from the bank to ensure my accounts were secure. My daughter again assisted me and called them, advising we were concerned about the security of my accounts and would they please freeze them until we could be sure that nothing untoward had or could happen.
Note to banks and all businesses and organisations: providing only a telephone number for contact or help is not of any assistance to those of us who are deaf and unable to use a telephone.
The bank was helpful, via my daughter, and my accounts were frozen. But then we needed to reinstate them. It took several emails to and from the bank and a lengthy Christmas Eve call by my daughter to defrost the accounts. We thought all was well.
Well. No. The defrosting was not that easy, despite assurances. It eventually took 20 days for them to be restored to full operational capacity.
I went around in circles in emails, was referred repeatedly by a bank representative (who knows I am deaf) to telephone numbers. And then, yet again, referred to telephone numbers in the return email to tell the same person I am unable to use telephone numbers, and, no, I don’t want to text lengthy and complicated issues. My daughter made many phone calls. Her help was on many occasions refused by the bank, which would not allow someone with my full authorisation to speak on my behalf while standing alongside, as I ‘might be being held at gunpoint’. And yet anyone can access my accounts if they are holding me at gunpoint by using face recognition technology. It is bizarre…
So, on that basis we had to go to another bank (I am in Australia and my original bank is in New Zealand) and have my passport and person verified and a letter written and sent from one manager to another, country to country. That was done.
Sufficient? No. I was later told to again visit the other bank and have my passport and person verified. The deep freeze continued.
In the Australian news on 8 January was the story of a family that was the victim of scammers – only some of them illegal – and could the bank be considered a legal arm of scamming? The case has now been settled but the family will feel traumatised and victimised for some time to come. The loss of money isn’t the only grief here.
Briefly (but do read the whole article): an elderly parent was scammed into downloading malware. The family immediately contacted the bank and was told that all was well and there had been no suspicious activity. They went off to bed, knowing they had ensured their accounts were safe, as stated by the bank.
But the scammers accessed their line of credit and removed $150,000 AUD in eight minutes. Then, the family was hit up by the legal scammers: the bank; they had to pay 6.9 per cent interest on the money that the bank had willingly handed over to the illegal scammers. The bank profited from the scam.
“It’s basically racketeering,” the man’s son told news.com.au. He is right. And it transpired the bank had failed to tell them of other steps that they needed to take to protect their accounts.
This case is just one example of banks failing us. It is their job to keep our money secure but their cyber security and processes are not fit for purpose. Scammers, purveyors of viruses, malware, spyware, or any other malign, manipulative, persuasive person, organisation or AI invention can help themselves at will to our money. If we’re lucky, we come through unscathed but far too many of us are let down by these institutions.
The process to reinstate my accounts, with full use of my funds, was rightly and justifiably rigorous in the thawing process. But it took 20 days.
Yet, it is easy for the thieves of all descriptions to remove your funds. They can remove our money at will. And they do. This is just wrong.
Along with many others, I have been scammed in a bait-and-switch swindle: they can be so subtle and not easy to see until the awful realisation dawns that, instead of a new pair of shoes, you just have a large bank withdrawal and bare feet.
We are all vulnerable to the meticulous planning of the scamming industry. Those who victim blame have likely not yet been a victim. I was not looking for deals too good to be true, or using an unknown or suspicious site: simply trying purchase footwear from a trusted and previously used business website. It is becoming impossible to trust the most benign and innocent of online transactions.
My questions to banks:
1. Why is it so difficult for you to protect our money? We can lock credit cards, but our accounts are just out there for anyone to help themselves to.
2. Why, having frozen them, does it take weeks to defrost them?
3. Why did the NZ branch manager not know how to unfreeze accounts? He had ‘to find out’. He and I were engaged in sufficient numbers of emails to make his wife suspicious.
4. In the absence of a straightforward and structured procedure to freeze and defrost, how are we supposed to protect our money? Three weeks is abysmal and unacceptable.
5. Why are the bad guys demonstrably smarter than those tasked with protecting our money and providing security? Hell, why don’t you just employ them, the bad guys, to do just that – they are obviously far more technically able than those you presently employ.
This exercise has cost us in interest, time and frustration. There was no identified process and the steps involved were not made clear, so we had to blunder through as best we could.
How come the bad guys can get our money so easily when we can’t?
