Who's Really Responsible In Online Banking Fraud?

TheRealStyro writes "According to this article a Miami businessman is suing a bank because of a fraudulent fund transfer possibly caused by the coreflood virus/trojan. He claims the bank is responsible because the bank failed to protect him from known online banking risks. It is obvious that this guy should have had an anti-virus package active, but shouldn't the bank have questioned such a large transfer to a republic of the former Soviet Union (these republics having gained the unfortunate notoriety of being dens of villainy and hackerdom)?"

Comments

Cooling Off For New Transfer Destinations

[Boricle]

Here in Australia, one of my financial institutions have recently changed their transfer policies so that transfers to a new destination (ie, one that you have not already transferred to) are "held" for 48 hours before the transfer completes (compared to overnight for regular transfers).

I believe that this is to facilitate a few things, such as:

* Easier to rollback "Oops, Wrong Account Number" problems.
* Easier to prevent the channelling of money to accounts from pishing victims (rough guess, if destination account is receiving several transfers in 24 hours, then raise red flag).

Of course, the cynical side of me thinks that its just an excuse for the bank to use the money on the short term money market for an extra 24 hours. ;)

Boris.

What happened to BofA $0 Liability?

[mjh]

This guy's bank is Bank of America. Here's a notable quote from the BofA Website:

$0 liability

With our Online Banking service, you can be confident that your Bank of America accounts will be secure and protected. We guarantee $0 liability for any unauthorized activity originating from Online Banking, including Bill Payment. Read Your Responsibilities for information about reporting unauthorized transactions to preserve your rights under this guarantee.

Unless I'm missing it, I don't see anywhere that it says the customer is responsible for running virus protection. Is there some reason that I'm missing as to why this very public guarantee does not apply?

Re:PayPal

[LadyLucky]

You can actually listen to this happen. Someone recorded their conversation with them. Read about it here:

http://paypal.ctyme.com/paypal/paypalsucks.htm

The best bit is how PayPal allows you to record their conversations :-)