More than £600 lost to ‘Microsoft hacker’ con

Faye, thanks for sharing. Good to hear that Which? persuaded Nationwide to correct their errors.

Nationwide behaved unprofessionally by refunding the money and then changing its mind.

The number of scam cases is worrying and my view is that each case should be investigated before making refunds, taking into account what blame can be attributed to the customer and what is due to deficiencies in the company’s procedures.

Sorry duncan, but I do not see the relevance of your comment. This was not, as far as I can see, about someone visiting inappropriate sites. I regularly get blackmail emails about alleged activity recorded on web cam demanding I pay bitcoins to prevent widespread distribution. I don’t visit naughty sites.

This is about being tricked into making a payment and the way banks should respond, In this case, Frank authorised a £94 payment and that was his own responsibility. An unauthorised payment of £523 was then taken and it is that one only that should have been refunded.

In general I’m concerned about the ease with which banks pay out 3 figure sums as “compensation” – depositors’ money of course – and while they made a mistake in this case, so did Frank in not recognising a possible scam.

My experience, incidentally, of Nationwide has been a very helpful and quick response to dealing with suspect payments made from an account.

I do not know any easy answer to such money scams, whether by card or online bank transfers. Ideally we should not allow bank accounts, or card payment accounts, to be set up by dubious people. But, as we have seen, such accounts may be “legitimate” – set up by students and lent to others for example – and may well be in other countries where we have limited powers. Our best approaches are to educate customers, regularly update then with warning and details of new scams, limit the way more vulnerable people can use their accounts – by choice or imposed – and investigate cases more thoroughly.

Where the receiving bank has contributed to the execution of the fraud, by some negligence or inadequate system for example, they should bear part or all the cost of a refund, not the customer’s own bank. Where a card fraud has been perpetrated then the organisation giving card trading facilities to the fraudster should provide redress. Maybe they will then be more diligent in who they allow to use their services?

While there are enough “Franks” in this world who are public spirited enough to want to help and naïve enough to be taken in, there will be criminals willing to cash in. As I’ve said previously, the success rate in detecting and catching these immoral beings is poor and thus they succeed and prosper. What is more puzzling is the ability of these people to help themselves to any amount of money from an account because they hold the bank details. There should have been some mechanism in place to verify Frank’s £94 agreement as being the only payment that was made. Not only did these criminals take that, but they were able to make a second withdrawal and possibly could have made more. In addition, there is no safeguard in place to ensure that Frank’s £94 was going where he thought it was. Frank wasn’t asked, and no detail of the reason for payment was secured by the bank, they simply shifted the money. In the old days, at the bank counter, you filled in a form and no one was able to steal money. Perhaps there should be an electronic equivalent.

Just to bring this topic back on track, and to prove that I at least read the original article, let’s remind ourselves that this is a TELEPHONE scam. Nothing to do with remote access or hacking. Nothing to do with any activity that you actually perform on your computer or because you are male. People’s fear of the unknown of hacking is just the hook that the scammers use.