Banks and Hacked itunes Account

Just the other day I had a call from one of our long-term clients, who had had an issue with her iTunes account and some unauthorised access on one of her Apple products.

The banks should stick to banking and leave the technology to those that know.
The banks should stick to banking and leave the technology to those that know.

Without going into too much detail, this resulted in the closure of the aforementioned Apple iTunes account (and any related accounts), and a brief conversation with her banks – this is where the ‘fun’ started.

The bank in question won’t be named but it is a recognised high street brand that you yourself may indeed bank with. (6)

Once the bank were informed of the compromised account details they simply refused to help unless certain ‘security checks’ were carried out. 🙄

This it seems amounted to installing ‘Panda Antivirus’ software and performing an online scan from the Kaspersky website – both of which would never have had no effect on the results of the compromised account (perform an antivirus scan after a hacking?!) and furthermore, could have harmed the stability and data on the PC.

It really annoyed me though that the bank refused to help, and proceeded to carry out pointless software installations and scans of which they have no idea of the potential impact of their actions.
You see the PC had already had the Eset Smart Security package installed, and it was not this PC that had been hacked. The account was compromised from an Apple device, not this PC. The fact that this PC also had the iTunes account on, meant that the bank got all uppity about security and refused to help unless their procedure was carried out.

I had visions of some junior geek on the helpline thinking “I know, just for fun lets carry out some random scans with ‘free’ software and see if it makes any difference. They will never know!!”
Pointless and potentially dangerous – had the client been using the McAfee range of products, or one of several other packages out there, the conflict of softwares would have meant the client meeting the dreaded ‘Blue Screen of Death’ (BSOD) aka a ‘Stop error’. Basically the PC is broken and needs a technician’s loving touch.

Luckily the Eset packages play nice with other software usually, so this didn’t happen. 😀

Message to the banks: You should stick to what you [think you…] do best – banking (although the cynic in me thinks that they don’t even do that terribly well at the moment!). :yell: