Tesco Bank Fined for Data Breach

Tesco Bank was fined £16.4m by the City watchdog over a cyber-attack it suffered that netted cyber criminals £2.26m.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said deficiencies at the bank had left account holders vulnerable to the incident. The bank had received a specific warning that was not properly addressed until the attack had started and the response was “too little, too late”.

This is the first time the FCA has issued a fine for a cyber-related incident.

Tesco Bank said that since the incident in November 2016 it had “significantly enhanced” security measures, and apologised to customers.

Mark Steward, executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA, said the fine “reflects the fact that the FCA has no tolerance for banks that fail to protect customers from foreseeable risks”. Banks must ensure resilience against such crime reducing the risk of a cyber attack occurring in the first place, not only reacting to an attack.

Tesco Bank said the cyber attack in 2016 did not involve the theft or loss of any customers’ data but led to 34 transactions where funds were debited from customers’ accounts, and other customers having normal service disrupted.

The bank’s chief executive Gerry Mallon said: “We are very sorry for the impact that this fraud attack had on our customers.”

Banks and other financial institutions must learn that it’s cheaper to build proper protection that wait for a catastrophe to happen.

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Fraud Investigation

There are many private investigators, fraud protection businesses, cyber-crime specialists etc. who may be able to help if you are the victim of a fraud.  This is usually only for business fraud as few individuals have the resources to employ professionals in this field.

One such specialist business is Requite Solutions. Their website is at www.requitesolutions.com/

Requite say they are cybercrime, fraud prevention and investigation specialists – a London based consultancy service operating globally.

They employ senior fraud detectives, cybercrime investigators, and former armed surveillance operatives who have years of experience tackling cybercrime, money laundering, organised, and business crime.

They provide high quality penetration testing by CREST certified penetration testers. Our teams of experts work manually to find more of the issues that matter.

Asset Tracing & Recovery, Investigation, Hackers,Financial Investigation, Suspect profiling, Evidential packages, Recovery, Dispute resolution.

 Requite Say businesses should choose them because of the following:-

  • Criminals are exploiting the advances in technology. Every day both large and small organisations are falling victim to fraud and cyber attacks. If you have experienced fraud or a cyber attack, then you will understand the frustration, stress, and panic that often ensues.
  • We will gather crucial evidence, trace assets, absorb your stress, and assist with achieving a positive outcome through recovery of assets and/or prosecution.
  • Staff at your company are often the first line of defence and the importance of training, and continuing education is essential. We can deliver this training in a clear and concise manner.
  • Ensuring that you are adequately protected against fraud and cyber-attacks is paramount. Failures to address any impending threats could damage your brand and reputation and may result in significant financial losses that are not always recoverable.

If you have any experiences with scammers, spammers or time-waster do let me know, by email.

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Amazon Fake Reviews

Amazon is the biggest eCommerce operation the world has ever seen with sales of $178 billion in 2017.

One of Amazon’s biggest sales promoters is the use of customer reviews.

If you’re going to buy something on Amazon but want to know what other people think of the product or service then you check the customer reviews and almost always they are genuine.

Amazon spend a lot of time and money ferreting out fake reviews and stopping any businesses that use or promote fake reviews and they say that more than 99% of reviews on its sites are authentic.

That doesn’t stop criminals and idiots trying to find ways around the rules of course.

Recently, organisations have been using Facebook to advertise free Amazon products in return for reviews.

The customer buys the item and is promised a full refund once they have posted a stellar review on Amazon.

It is against Facebook rules for their users to promote fake reviews, but as we all know, Facebook have trouble actually policing content on their platform.

One such Facebook group is “Amazon free product deals between reviewer and seller [UK only]” which is a closed group and describes its purpose as:-

We help Amazon UK sellers to boost up rankings via getting reviews through our gradually building reliable members.

To become a member, you need to commit to review the product with 5* within 5 days of “order”. If this is not done, you would be banned and would miss out from brilliant discounts offered!

That’s clear – you need to give top rating reviews or you are banned from the group.

That’s not how people expect customer reviews to work.

Stop cheating – as we all lose out from that.

If you do check Amazon reviews – make sure to read several and don’t be taken in by the first one your read.

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Financial Loss Due to Fraud

 

 

Source: Crime Survey for England and Wales. Office of National Statistics. 2017 data.

 Cost Fraud Involving Financial Loss (%) Cumulative Loss (%)
Less than £20 9.0 9.0
£20 – £99 30.0 39.0
£100 – £249 18.8 57.9
£250 – £499 14.5 72.3
£500 – £999 10.9 83.2
£1000 – £2,499 9.6 92.8
£2,500 – £4,999 4.2 97.0
£5,000 – £9,999 1.7 98.7
£10,000 – £19,999 0.8 99.4
£20,000 and above 0.6 100.0

You can see from the figures that there were modest losses (less than £100) for 39 % of victims, but at the other extreme, some people lost more than £20,000.

The higher losses are most commonly from frauds involving house purchase and investment fraud.

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Action Fraud Scam Calls

The scam typically goes like this:-

  1. The victim receives a cold-call from a fraudster claiming to work for Action Fraud.
  2. When the call is answered, an automated system asks the responder to “press 1 if they have made a report to Action Fraud.”
  3. When the responder presses 1, they are transferred to a fraudster.
  4. The victim is informed that their computer has been hacked and their bank account has been accessed without permission and money taken.
  5. The scammer may ask some simple questions to build trust e.g. are the lights on your router flashing? Do you have credit cards? Do you have more computers in the house?
  6. The scammer may ask the victim to run some programmes on their PC and use the results on screen to ‘prove’ that the computer has been compromised.
  7. The scammer asks for access to the computer and ask the victim to install remote control software to make it possible for the scammer to take control.
  8. Once they can control the computer the scammer can search for financial and personal information an if possible access the victim’s bank account.
  9. Victims discover later on that money has been stolen from their account or maybe days later that someone is spending on their credit card etc.

What Can You Do?

Even if the caller is knows details such as your name or address, don’t give out any personal or financial information during a cold call.

Don’t give a caller remote access to your computer, don’t go to a website they give you and don’t install software they recommend or supply.

Action Fraud does not use an automated machine to speak to victims of fraud, so if you receive a suspicious call, hang up immediately.

If you think your bank or payment card details have been compromised, or if you believe you have been defrauded, contact your bank immediately.

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