Ordinary Gweilo

I think I overlooked this rather fine rant from Henry a week or so ago.  He is complaining that Internet fraud against banks is only a problem because a small minority ignore all the warnings and click on links that take them to fraudulent websites.  Yet HSBC are now making life more difficult for all of their customers in an attempt to reduce their losses, forcing you to fill in a paper form to register the accounts to which you may wish to transfer money. 

As it happens, The Times had a story about this on Saturday, with a rather misleading headline and introduction (if you can’t read it the headline says "Victims of internet bank fraud will have to pay up").

BANKS will no longer honour the debts of victims of internet fraud after a sudden rise in attacks against online accounts, The Times has learnt.  Britain’s 14 million internet bank customers have faced a month of intense bombardment from fraudsters trying to access online accounts in devious “phishing” scams.

In fact, what the banks (in the UK at least) are planning is not to refuse to honour these debts, but to stop doing so automatically.  Instead they will investigate each case individually to determine whether the customer was at fault.  If the customer was stupid or negligent they will have to stand some or all of the losses themselves.  If the customer did nothing wrong, the bank will still absorb the loss.

Seems fair enough to me.