Lost money in ATM card: Revealing bank security holes?

The recent loss of 129 million VND from Mr. Nguyen Minh Duong's DongA Bank ATM card, while the card is still being held by the bank, has revealed a loophole in bank security?

Continuous loss of money in account

In August 2016, public opinion was stirred up when a customer of the Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank) lost 500 million VND in his account overnight. These transactions were made via Internet banking without the customer receiving a text message notifying the OTP code as is usually the case when making a transaction. After complaining, Ms. Huong was refunded 300 million VND by Vietcombank. This was the amount of money that the scammer had not yet transferred out of the system and the bank had promptly blocked.

Previously, in January 2016, Ms. Hanh’s personal account in Viet Tri using the VIB Values ​​card of Vietnam International Commercial Joint Stock Bank (VIB Bank) had a large amount of money withdrawn in an unusual way. The strange thing was that there were 8 withdrawal transactions and all were made in Saigon, while Ms. Hanh was in Viet Tri. However, it took more than 2 months for this amount of money to be returned to Ms. Hanh’s personal account.

A case of a customer of the Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Agribank), Mr. Khanh in Long Bien in March 2017 was also shocked when he received text messages saying that money was transferred from his account continuously during the night. It is worth mentioning that these transactions took place while his card was still in his wallet. After 2 weeks of complaining, Mr. Khanh was able to get his money back.

The most recent case was the loss of 129 million VND from his account while the card was still being held by the bank. Mr. Nguyen Minh Duong, in Quang Ngai, while withdrawing money from an ATM card of DongA Bank at a Sacombank ATM, his card was swallowed. While he had not yet gone to the bank to get the card, in early April, his account was withdrawn 17 times, totaling 129 million VND through two ATMs of DongABank and Techcombank.

To reassure customers, DongA Bank has proactively contacted customers to inform them of the bank's progress in resolving the case. At the same time, it commits that even if the bank's verification results show no errors in the use of the card, the customer's legal rights will always be guaranteed according to regulations.

Revealing loopholes in banking security

Most cases of lost money in customer accounts are able to receive all or part of the lost amount back, but they have to wait for a very time-consuming verification process.

To limit these risks, Vietcombank recently announced the adjustment of the terms and conditions of use of new e-Banking services for individual customers. However, these regulations have met with public reaction and are considered unreasonable, shirking responsibility and shifting risks to customers. Vietcombank immediately had to temporarily suspend the application of these terms.

Many people with ATM accounts worry about theft. Illustration photo

Not only Vietcombank, many banks have also issued regulations on transaction hours at ATMs to prevent card crimes after many cases of money being lost in accounts at midnight. Accordingly, these banks, including Agribank, have announced that ATMs will operate from 6am to 9pm or 7am to 10pm every day instead of 24/24 hours and 7/7 days a week as regulated by the State Bank.

Many banks choose a "safer" approach by constantly sending customers warnings about fraud cases; encouraging customers to regularly change their PIN codes, register for the service of receiving SMS notifications of account balance changes and update personal information with the bank when there are changes (contact address, phone number, email...)

In fact, there have been many cases of money being lost in accounts. Most of the cases have no clear conclusion about the cause or if there is, it is usually concluded that it is due to the disclosure of personal information of customers.

What customers are most concerned about right now is whether there are security holes, where this information comes from, from leaked internal bank information or weak anti-hacking measures.

According to a banking security expert, these incidents are not only caused by the people but also by the banks. This could be a sign that there are many loopholes in credit card management in particular and loopholes in the security of the banking system in general. This raises an urgent need to patch security holes in the current banking system.

Mai Phuong/baotintuc