Consumer advocates have again called for a review of Australia's online banking laws after at least 6 ING customers lost their savings to phishing within the space of six months. Despite lodging complaints with the financial authority only half the victims got their money back, raising questions about how the banks are being policed.
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TVTranscript
00:00 Roger Parker still clearly remembers the moment he realised $16,000 was missing from his ING
00:07 account.
00:08 How did they do this? And I was angry. I was really quite furious about it.
00:14 In the middle of the night, hackers added 11 new payees to his ING address book before
00:19 17 unauthorised transactions were made. But ING refused to pay Roger back, accusing him
00:25 of falling for a phishing scam and entering details into a fake ING website.
00:30 The consumer seems to be blamed for everything and hackers improving their way of hacking
00:37 people. And we seem to be the poor buggers that suffer the most.
00:44 Roger lodged a complaint with the Australian Financial Complaints Authority and he wasn't
00:48 the only one. Between January and July last year, at least five other ING customers complained
00:55 to the ombudsman after losing their savings through phishing attacks, but only three received
00:59 their money back. Roger ended up accepting a settlement of only $5,000 from ING.
01:05 We definitely question whether the right conclusion has been reached.
01:09 The Consumer Action Law Centre says gaps in Australia's online banking regulations are
01:13 to blame for the inconsistent rulings by the Financial Complaints Authority.
01:17 It's not really based on fairness or on what's right. It's based on problems with the law
01:22 right now.
01:24 Last month, the federal government indicated it could follow the UK's lead and make it
01:28 mandatory for banks to reimburse scam victims. Australians lost more than $3 billion to scams
01:34 last year and experts say banks aren't doing enough to protect their customers.
01:39 Some of the experts I work with are extremely paranoid in this space. They literally check
01:43 their account banking details every night before they go to bed at the moment.
01:47 ING says it regularly reviews and updates its security measures, but it's cold comfort
01:52 to Roger who's in the process of changing banks.
01:54 They really need to respect us a bit more.
01:56 [BLANK_AUDIO]