New Zealand Banks Demand a Peek at User PCs

Montgomery Burns III writes with a link to a ComputerWorld article on a ... unique approach to bank security. New Zealand financial institutions are looking for a way to access customer PCs used in online banking transactions. Their goal is to verify the security of the user's terminal. "Under the terms of a new banking Code of Practice, banks may request access in the event of a disputed transaction to see if security protection in is place and up to date. Liability for any loss resulting from unauthorized Internet banking transactions rests with the customer if they have 'used a computer or device that does not have appropriate protective software and operating system installed and up to date, [or] failed to take reasonable steps to ensure that the protective systems, such as virus scanning, firewall, antispyware, operating system and antispam software on [the] computer, are uptodate.'"

Comments

Re:The feeling is mutual.

[alexgieg]

The bank once deposited $80,000 into my sisters' account by mistake. She told them about it ....the next week, it was "corrected" - it was then $234,000.00.

The funny thing is that many banks (the huge ones mainly) are in fact allowed, by their respective central banks, to "invent" money out of nowhere. This of course causes inflation, but so long as they don't do it so much that it would cause the upper yearly inflation limit set by the central bank to be surpassed, it's perfectly okay.

This world we live in is crazy.

Re:Therefore.....

[ktappe]

All of you damned users not running Microsoft OS will be liable. Just because anti-spyware software does not exist for your software platform is no excuse!

This exact thing happened at my workplace recently (the 3rd largest bank in the U.S...look it up.) Our new "WebConnect" VPN system will not work with Linux and Mac OS X because their first step upon connecting to it is for it to check for viruses and spyware. As this checker ("WholeSecurity", owned by Symantec) does not work on anything but Microsoft systems, only they are allowed in. Because Linux and Mac OS X are nearly mal-ware free, and therefore weren't programmed for by the mal-ware checker developers, these more secure OSes are completely precluded from connecting.

Mod Parent Wrong

[Hal The Computer]

Sigh, this is why we need an "incorrect" moderation.

That is possibly the worst explanation of the money multiplier effect that i have ever heard.

Re:Rediculous to require a subpoena ...

[rtb61]

I think you miss the point. It is the bank's responsibility to ensure the authorised person and only the authorised person access the account. What this is, is the equivalent of saying that some how that is now the customers responsibility. It is just so wrong, if the bank chooses to offer a service, than it is the banks responsibility to ensure that the service can be offered securely, not the customers.

For example how many banks were only accessible via IE even when there were warnings about using IE and that everybody should be using Firefox, no whose fault is that. If banks are serious, then what they should simply do is force everyone to dual boot and only access the bank services via Firefox running on top of Linux.

Or more realistically they can demand the use of a hardware security device, like a usb based device combined with user name and password, but of course the buggers are way to greedy and cheap to do something like that.