What security measures do the Banks Have in Place

[mammalisa]

Can anyone on this forum advise me how 'someone' has managed to continually debit my account with foreign transactions for the past 2 months and the bank never noticed.

 

I received my bank statements yesterday and found to my horror that page after page was filled with USD conversions to GBP . After contacting the bank (Halifax) they advised me that there are pages and pages of these transactions for February also. So many in fact that they have passed the whole account to the Fraud Department and requested a scan of the whole account - there were too many for them to write down.

 

My question is how can this happen. Do the banks not have any security measures in place to monitor accounts for this type of unusual behaviour. Even the woman at the bank said she has dealt with internet fraud before but she has not seen anything like this. You are talking literally, pages filled with these transactions.

 

Why was no flags raised at the bank.

 

To say that I am frustrated is an understatement. I cannot believe that the bank were totally unaware. When I telephoned the bank there were already about £200 worth of these transactions waiting to be cleared just for the past 2 days.

 

What security measures do the banks have - if any.

 

These transactions were using my debit card no. so it looked like an online purchase has been made. But I would have had to sit at my computer and purchase about 10 items every day for approximately the same price for the past 2 months. Add to this the £1.50 transactions fee. This is one hell of a lot of money.

 

Any information people can provide regarding the banks security measures would be much appreciated. Do they not have any type of scan in place looking for this type of behaviour. Aaargh, it just makes me so mad that this went un-noticed by Halifax.

 

MammaLisa

[Mrsmancmonkey]

Hi Mammalisa

 

I know my bank are spot on with things like this and do have flags in place, but I bank with First Direct.

 

On another note, do you not have internet banking so you can view your account more often as it might be worth setting that up considering the banks poor security measures.

 

Good luck with sorting it out

[buzby]

I think you'll find their security measures are 'secret' - if they weren't, we'd all be able to do the same. From what you say, it looks as though the transactions went through because they were under the floor limit that would have triggered a manual check. You don't say if this was card-based, with a merchant overseas taking funds from your account via a debit card, but it would seem the most likely - so a change of card number would be urgently required.