Banks should stop sending text messages

T

tomdublin

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Revolut users fall victim to convincing scam text message

Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman dealing with surge in complaints linked to payments app
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All this phishing fraud would stop immediately if banks agreed to never send text messages or emails to their customers and use authentication apps instead. Text messages are old technology and Irish low-tech banks should be made to upgrade their IT. By continuing to send text messages they unnecessarily expose their customers to the danger of fraud.
 
It'd definitely reduce it, and definitely should be done, but it wouldn't stop it completely. Its why there is a push towards removing passwords, and also why for a lot of brokers, there are additional security features beyond just the apps. It is always a trade off between convenience and security.
 
tomdublin said:
Text messages are old technology and Irish low-tech banks should be made to upgrade their IT.
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Don't "high tech" and non Irish banks such as Revolut, Bunq, Raisin etc. also use SMS for 2FA etc.?

And if you insist that customers must have a smartphone in order to run authentication apps then I can just picture the Liveline show with people moaning that the banks are effectively shutting them out.
 
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I got a text a few days asking if I recognised a transaction on my credit card. I didn't and was able to text back the word 'No' and put a restriction on my card straight away.

I don't have an issue with texts or e-mails. The rule it is still simple. You never provide any information to texts, emails or cold calls from banks or click any links. I do have an issue with the banks sending links on their genuine texts or emails. They should never do that even if just a link to their marketing guff.
 
ClubMan said:
And don't forget the unintended side effect of GDPR mandated cookie warnings that have conditioned many of us to just click "yes" automatically to stuff that we don't read.
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Really is a bug bear of mine. Keep trying to be good but after visiting the first few websites, fatigue sets in and I just click yes which leads to endless cycle of clearing cookies and starting all over again on regular basis......
 
ryaner said:
It'd definitely reduce it,
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Merely reducing it would still leave people guessing whether or not a text message was genuine or not. Stopping bank texts completely without any exceptions whatsoever would remove the ambiguity. It would end almost all IT-baseed financial fraud immediately.
 
I had this the other day where I had a genuine text from AIB. It came from a number starting 086, so I presumed it was junk. It was only when the card was put on hold, and I got another message to call the number on the card that I checked on the phone number used, and found it was genuine.
 
Seagull said:
I had this the other day where I had a genuine text from AIB. It came from a number starting 086, so I presumed it was junk.
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Why would you think that when 086 is one of the valid Irish mobile number prefixes?
 
tomdublin said:
Merely reducing it would still leave people guessing whether or not a text message was genuine or not. Stopping bank texts completely without any exceptions whatsoever would remove the ambiguity. It would end almost all IT-baseed financial fraud immediately.
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What I said was stopping text messages for 2fa would reduce fraud, it wouldn't stop it. Every time new protections come in, the scammers start working around them pretty quickly.

Just look at some of the professional broker systems which require a 2fa app. They know that even that isn't enough and have numerous other protections such as device locks, ip range locks, even time locks for some operations.

And also remember there are humans on the other end. They are, and always will be the weak point in the system.
 
Sunny said:
Really is a bug bear of mine. Keep trying to be good but after visiting the first few websites, fatigue sets in and I just click yes which leads to endless cycle of clearing cookies and starting all over again on regular basis......
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You can get browser add ons that automatically delete cookies when you close your browser or auto reject etc. Although some sites don't function correctly if you reject cookies.
 
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