101–110 of 174 posts
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I'm sure the creditors would be lenient if you can prove this incident complicated things for you.
Can't tell if this is sarcasm. Then again, maybe I am overly cynical. UK utilities at least do seem to have a more positive approach towards people struggling to pay than other countries.
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> Gov will enforce GPG level encryption for every bank interaction - 2FA with Time based OTP for example I don't think that's going to happen just yet. UK bank regulation is famously light touch and the government is extremely preoccupied at the moment. (The loss applies to the bank, not the customers, so they've got plenty of incentive to fix this. And it's quite possible it's a backend hack from the sound of some o…
What's surprised me in moving to the US from the UK is just how effective the light touch approach has been for the UK from a consumer perspective. In effect, banks are told to get in a room and ensure they're not worlds apart technically. The outcome of that has been Faster Payments and the SMS transfers that followed it, and soon a read and write open banking API. In the US I still get charged for withdrawing from…
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This is pretty standard for UK banks. They'd do a hash of each character of the password (in Lloyds' case, your "memorable word" combo), to compare your entries to.
Wait, that's still awful! It allows you to crack each character individually. For instance, a 10-letter password requires 26^10 ~= 1.4e14 attempts to test every option if you only have a hash of the full password, but only 10*26 = 260 attempts to test every option for every individual character.
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I don't think this is at all true. Customers at just about every bank are hit by fraud, a lot of it through no fault of the customer, and yet banks don't seem to spend much time tracking down the criminals. It must be far cheaper for the banks to reimburse customers rather than to patch all the security weaknesses of their financial systems. This strongly suggests that the reputational cost of hacking and fraud just…
> banks don't seem to spend much time tracking down the criminals I am curious how you come to this conclusion, given that banks are extremely reticent to discuss what security measure they take and to avoid any publicity about security breaches (even publicity about how they caught someone brings the problem back to the public's mind). So if they WERE being effective in tracking down the criminals, how would you kno…
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Right, but until that insurance pays out you're maybe faced with a bill you cannot pay in the meantime.
I'm sure the creditors would be lenient if you can prove this incident complicated things for you.
I wonder what the security flaw was? It is interesting that all the customers are still allowed to use their cards for cash withdrawals and payments, and they can all still log in to their online accounts. There doesn't seem to be any mention of a system-wide password reset. So... it sounds like there wasn't a widespread theft of account credentials, and that the attack was some kind of weakness in the bank's online…
So they may still be vulnerable. If UK customers can find a low (or no) cost alternative place to put what remains of their money, I'd do that now. This might not be over.
They may not know how the attackers gained access or if they're still inside until incident responders have done a full workup on the network.
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> personally doubt a wealthy person would use that bank and yet they seem to think their customers are pissing gold. Actually they give a decent interest rate (relative to the competition) of 3% on the first £3,000[0] so I know a few people who have multiple accounts with them just to reap the interest. [0] http://www.tescobank.com/current-accounts/
3% minus inflation of 0.6% that would be 2.4% of £3000, which is £72 a year, which gives £6 a month. Is it worth the hassle?
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It's not like the rest of the economy is immune from inflation though. Do we adjust everything for inflation? It just strikes me as pointless complication. Really, the only point I can think of is comparing saving to outright immediate spending.
Certain statistics are usually inflation adjusted, like GDP. Real Gross Domestic Product measures economic output adjusted for inflation or deflation. If inflation is 20%, and you're earning 3% interest, your losing purchasing power. If inflation is 1% and you're earning 3%, you're gaining. Real, not nominal, returns are what people care about.
Yes but I think the point the person you're replying to is trying to make is that it doesn't matter because the inflation rate is not dependent on where you put your money.
Shouldn't the comparison be to the interest rates and risk with comparable places to put/invest your money? I suppose if inflation were extremely high or low compared to interest rates then it would affect your appetite for risk vs interest rate, but I don't think that's the case here.
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It's not like the rest of the economy is immune from inflation though. Do we adjust everything for inflation? It just strikes me as pointless complication. Really, the only point I can think of is comparing saving to outright immediate spending.
Certain statistics are usually inflation adjusted, like GDP. Real Gross Domestic Product measures economic output adjusted for inflation or deflation. If inflation is 20%, and you're earning 3% interest, your losing purchasing power. If inflation is 1% and you're earning 3%, you're gaining. Real, not nominal, returns are what people care about.
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In many instances the amount taken is significantly more than £500 too. One colleague has had £800 taken. He's quite stressed right now.
I'm wondering why the individual the amounts were so (relatively speaking) small? Perhaps some strategy to avoid tripping warning systems. Do you know if the the £800 was all there was in that particular account?