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Tesco Bank halts online payments after money was taken from 20K accounts

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Tesco Bank halts online payments after money was taken from 20K accounts

#161

Post by rasz_pl »

jameshart wrote: post #117
elcct wrote: post #24

> Tesco Bank is stressing that relatively small amounts were taken from 20,000 accounts If someone is living month to month, said £500 missing could be very serious complication of life and £25 "emergency fund" is a joke. I personally doubt a wealthy person would use that bank and yet they seem to think their customers are pissing gold.

Another way to look at it is that a relatively large amount of money was taken from Tesco, and Tesco has simultaneously been fooled into reducing the reported balance on 20,000 customer accounts. The difference is between whether this is seen as a bank robbery, or a series of minor incidents of identity theft.

yes, the infamous Mitchell & Webb Identity Theft sketch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E

Re: Tesco Bank halts online payments after money was taken from 20K accounts

#162

Post by vidarh »

scoot wrote: post #149
thesimon wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily EU regulation now requires most banks to open a (basic) bank account. Just need an ID and a proof of address. Some banks even allow opening the bank account over the internet if you are a EU resident. (I know your pain though, opened a UK bank account a year ago, from the EU as well. The most difficult thing for me was actually the proof of address. Metro Bank required 2 plus 2 proofs of ID, a different bank…

> The most difficult thing for me was actually the proof of address. You don't need to prove a UK address, just an address. Depending on the bank, you can open a UK bank account with an overseas address, and change it after you move. If you haven't planned ahead, then anecdotally Barclays will open an account in branch with only a passport.

UK banks will also tend to be a lot easier to deal with if your employer is willing to write a letter and/or call their business banking contact to arrange for it.

That's how I got my first UK account.

Re: Tesco Bank halts online payments after money was taken from 20K accounts

#163

Post by vidarh »

nextos wrote: post #138
threesixandnine wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came to the UK in June this year. Both me and my wife moved because of the job. We are from another EU country. What's interesting is that I signed us up for Tesco bank account but we were both rejected. Probably because we didn't have any history in UK yet but it still kind of sucked - now I am glad they rejected us. Ultimately the next day we went to red and blue US bank on the high street and got it all sorted w…

UK financial policies are very weird, and in some cases I'd argue they go against the right for freedom of movement as granted by EU. I guess that doesn't mean much with Brexit, but still... I've been working in a variety of EU countries, with no issues at all. In Denmark, I was even able to secure a mortgage within my second week in the country. I always work for very reputable employers, with long-term contracts. A…

The UK rules are a side effect of a system where there is no national ID number that is considered acceptable for identification purposes, and no national register of where people live, which makes it very easy for people to run away from debts etc..

The various id requirements and 3-year credit history expectation are basically workarounds for this.

Re: Tesco Bank halts online payments after money was taken from 20K accounts

#164

Post by walshemj »

parenthesis wrote: post #71
brador wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Brexit uncertainty the current GBP inflation is over 20%. 3% is a drop in an ocean on that.

The UK doesn't import everything.

60% of food and petrol (gas) is priced in dollars

Re: Tesco Bank halts online payments after money was taken from 20K accounts

#165

Post by walshemj »

irq11 wrote: post #38
tome wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ideally in at least two different countries Is it generally easy to open accounts in countries you are not resident in?

It depends on your country, and the country you're looking at. If you are an American, be aware that merely having a bank account in a foreign country will make your life a lot more complicated at tax time. It's probably not worth the pain, unless you have a specific need.

Actually some Uk /Euro banks wont take American customers to avoid the extra costs the IRS insists on.

Re: Tesco Bank halts online payments after money was taken from 20K accounts

#166

Post by lifeisstillgood »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #15

it seems to be money transferred from accounts (£600 mentioned as an amount). But to set up 20,000 new transfers, and extract money from them, without 2FA, and without tripping any number of alarms is a terrible failure in security. This will massively affect their provider fiserv, their internal team will almost certainly have to be replaced and I would be surprised if they don't throw their hands up and go back to…

Just to tie this off:

It seems there are three main ways to monetise credit card / account data:

1. aggregate into a mule account

2. aggregate into an international account

3. extract cash via ATMs / payments

All three suffer from a high propensity to trigger alerts, and so rely on a fairly sophisticated understanding of each banks trigger rates.

So back in 2010 some banks could be hit with a flash attack (4) where hundreds of debit transactions for similar amounts at same time would not trigger stops (one assumes the debit approval infrastructure was fast and in memory and only went back to the ledger every five mins)

So as attackers find new vulnerabilities banks apply new systems.

(1) MIcrosoft report on this can't find right now

(2) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Bangladesh_Bank_heist

(3) http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/05/10/nyregion/eight-charged-...

(4) http://www.atmmarketplace.com/blogs/quotflash-attacksquot-ma...

Re: Tesco Bank halts online payments after money was taken from 20K accounts

#167

Post by joering2 »

sushid wrote: post #154
joering2 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of your first $100k insured in US bank via FDIC (above that you have to have personal insurance which is very expensive), it might take even 15 years to recover your funds, depending on complexity of claims and number of different instruments that bank has offered to its clients. For example, there are still open and active claims in case of NextBank that has been shut down in 2002, and had some updates on s…

Seriously? You'd suggest one keeps 70% of their liquid asset in _cash_ at home? Yes, if you're living during the Great Depression perhaps but your suggest is ludicrous. Maybe a few percentage points in crypto and cash, but most of it should be in your bank/investment accounts.

Bank and investment accounts will yeld you single-digit points per year and in most cases - unless you have few MM, the cost of your bank account will be more than what you earn.

Meanwhile banks wage war on cash. Its harder and harder to withdraw your own money. Here, try and show up at your bank say you need $150,000. They tell you to come back in few days, and in some cases they will ask you to fill out the form and explain yourself why you want to withdraw your own money.

If you do not live in a reasonably safe neighborhood, plus do not owe an alarm system, plus do not owe a safe, plus do not awe a firearm, then yes the bank is your best friend. Other than that no reason to keep some federal paper at someone's else possession at their disposal for a mere 0.5% per year. You don't gain anything and in some cases, you might lose some or all of it (yes extreme scenarios but always)

Here few articles to continue...

http://dailycaller.com/2014/01/29/bank-refuses-to-give-custo...

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/feds-banks-inform-law-enfor...

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-25861717

and here this one quick very informative read: http://www.rd.com/advice/saving-money/secrets-bank-teller-wo...

ps. in all fairness I would say keep 70% in gold or silver, but over the years this commodity has been shifted between the countries in such huge quantity (government buy/sell-outs), that the price is dictate by which country has specific political system and how much PM they owe, rather than true market price. Unless you can predict you won't need to turn your PM into cash within next 5-10 years, which is hard calculation for anyone these days.

Re: Tesco Bank halts online payments after money was taken from 20K accounts

#168

Post by Taek »

maxerickson wrote: post #47
Taek wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep a lot of money in cryptocurrency in my cold wallets. Those can't be seized, no run on the banks there, and thus far the appreciation has been great.

Your cryptocoins can be tainted by a government though. That is, the addresses can be published by whatever entity with a threat to taint addresses they send value too unless the target addresses turn the value over to the government entity.

That creates a light-cone of taint, and really gambles on a big enough portion of the economy caring about taint.

Also, hard to taint coins you don't realize exist. Not that I have any of those, mine are all from exchanges, but miners could easily have backup coins, as could OTC traders

Re: Tesco Bank halts online payments after money was taken from 20K accounts

#169

Post by allengeorge »

mstade wrote: post #134
allengeorge wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't recommend that for the average individual (who, unlike most of the readers on this site, don't have a lot of disposable cash in savings anyways) - at least from a tax filing perspective. At the very least you're going to have to start filing an FBAR annually, and (depending on tax treaties) have deal with withholding credits. That all aside, there's the currency-conversion hassle, and the fees associated w…

I should have mentioned I'm in the EU, and the single market makes this a lot simpler – apologies.

Ah. My bad - yes, I replied from a North-American-centric perspective. I have no knowledge of the EU, and can only assume that the common market would make things simpler (though I wonder if the banks there are really independent of each other, and shocks in each others' home economies.)

Re: Tesco Bank halts online payments after money was taken from 20K accounts

#170

Post by jackweirdy »

guitarbill wrote: post #147
jackweirdy wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If memory serves, the fees UK banks were charging were outrageous compared to other EU countries. Only recently via government pressure have fees got more reasonable. Make no mistake, UK banks are also scum. The only time it works without regulation is when banks' interest align with customers, e.g. contactless payment. For the bank, less PIN exposure so less chance of compromise and liability. For customers, quick t…

Fees for what? The only bank fee I've ever paid is a £1 fee for paying by card in a non GBP currency.
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