Major Help Re: Bank Fraud

[nannamoon1]

I am hoping you will be able to give me the answer:-

My bank account has been subject to high value fraudulent use, we have been told by the fraud department that this had been done via telephone banking, this means that someone has all our personal detail i.e. D.O.B, address, postcode, and the answer to a security question, mothers maiden name etc.

I cannot take in the fact that someone has all these details, they have made 8 separate transactions and set up one standing order to another bank, I have tried to request to listen to all of the telephone calls under the data protection act, as I need to see if security was conducted properly, as I have been told that the bank have been know on several occasions to prompt a person if they do not know or have forgotten security questions, and the bank are not allowed to do this.

I have been told by the bank that I cannot listen to the telephone conversations, I can only have a transcript and that I would have to write in and pay £10 and they have 40 days to provide this.

Can someone advise me if I am actually allowed to listen to the actual telephone calls of my account, as a transcript is no use to me what so ever, as they can edit any of the conversation they so wish to.

sorry this is a bit long.

[Steward]

You can use Google to search the web using these links below:-

[Jimbo44]

I am hoping you will be able to give me the answer:-

My bank account has been subject to high value fraudulent use, we have been told by the fraud department that this had been done via telephone banking, this means that someone has all our personal detail i.e. D.O.B, address, postcode, and the answer to a security question, mothers maiden name etc.

I cannot take in the fact that someone has all these details, they have made 8 separate transactions and set up one standing order to another bank, I have tried to request to listen to all of the telephone calls under the data protection act, as I need to see if security was conducted properly, as I have been told that the bank have been know on several occasions to prompt a person if they do not know or have forgotten security questions, and the bank are not allowed to do this.

I have been told by the bank that I cannot listen to the telephone conversations, I can only have a transcript and that I would have to write in and pay £10 and they have 40 days to provide this.

Can someone advise me if I am actually allowed to listen to the actual telephone calls of my account, as a transcript is no use to me what so ever, as they can edit any of the conversation they so wish to.

sorry this is a bit long.

If you're sure there has been fraudulent use of your bank account and you have had money removed from it then there's only one course of action in my view - the police!

Bear in mind that people in a bank's fraud department work for that bank, are paid their salaries by that bank and have their first loyalty and responsibility to that bank.

On the other hand, the police have a duty to investigate if criminal activity is suspected. It's also quite probably the case that compensation could be easier to achieve if a successful prosecution has been brought.

My advice? Go to the police, report what you know.....and make sure you get a crime number for future reference.

[nannamoon1]

Hi,

I have already ben to the police and got a crime reference number, the money has been refunded, but my question is, I have my doubts that the bank did not perfom security properly when the person rang up 8 times to transfer funds from our bank account.

Therefore I have request under the DPA to listen to the telephone conversations recordings as they are recorded, I have been told that I can only have this in a transcript version, and my point is that is no use to me as the bank can edit to suit themselves especially if the have not conducted security properly.

I know for a fact that the bank in particular prompt you should you not know the answer to the security question, I also cannot get my head around the fact that the person rang 8 times within 12 hours and passed security every time.

I want to ask if under the DPA am I only entitled to a transcript copy of the recordings or am I within my rights to be able to listen to the actual telephone conversations.

[patdavies]

In my opinion, neither.

What you are entitled to is a copy of the recording.

In law, any audio or video recording is a document. You are entitled to a copy of the document.

However, and here I do speak from inside knowledge of call centre technology, the recordings are not kept in a form that can be replayed by a home user. So I would accept the transcript for the moment and require that they certify it as a true record.

If any of this comes to a court, then they will probably have to produce the recording. If the transcript varies from this, they will be in deep doo-doo; it is simply not worth the risk for them to edit it.

[buzby]

Firstly, ANY transcription can be edited whether it is audio or written and depending on the system used, it is often easy to provide modified transcriptions without the recipient being aware. However call centre recording equipment of the last few years also provides an inaudible timecode stream - an invisible version of the codes sometimes seen on CCTV footage, they call it a 'watermark'. Your request for the audio recording is not unreasonable, and you should be able to demand that a paper transcript will not provide the relevant watermark and be useless for evidence purposes, therefore stick to your guns.

As for providing a copy, Pat is correct when he says they are not kept in a form than can be replayed on home equipment, they are either multitrack tapes or HD compressed recordings, however they all have the ability to be transferred to another standard format - usually CD Audio, so you can certainly press for this and see if they're just being obstructive.

As to your predicament, whith your personal data compromised in this way, you really have to be ultra vigilant and would need an ongoing checking service from the credit reference agencies who will report to you any activity on your credit record. This will become all the more common as people surrender their details to centralised databases that are compromised.

[nannamoon1]

Hello,

Many thanks for your replies, I have sent the letter requesting a copy of the telephone recordings & I have asked them to certify that the transcript is a true record.

I will wait and see what this reveals, & make a decision from there, i have also been advised to ask when the last call was made thus being the 8th time in less than 12 hours, why did the operater not feel that this was unusal activity on my account, this appears not to have been noticed.

yet again this causes me concern as to whether the bank have protected my interests in detecting unusual activity, and the fact that 7 of the transfers were made to within the same bank and yet on the 8th call the person was now setting up a standing order to another bank and this amount would have left the account at zero to the penny.

This has really affected me, I feel that our Identitys have been burgled, I am not sure I will ever come to terms with this unless I have proof that the bank have conducted security properly, protected our identity, & was able to identify unusal activity on our account.

[buzby]

You've learned a valuable lesson, and this violation is all the more dreadful because there is very little you can do to stop it unless you have proceedures in place to ensure nobody as ALL the correct information. I change DoB's, middle initials and names, even the Electorol Roll I know when it has been used to contact me. Even then I don't feel totally secure, but I'm d*mn sure keeping all my info in one place is just asking for trouble.