Not many years ago, when our physical world came in contact with the digital one, a cartoon attempted to show the funny side of bank robbery at precisely such a confluence.
As the bank robber points his gun at the teller, the latter asks: "Did you know that you can do this online?" If they didn't then, they surely do now.
Then the victims were the banks and their staff, but today the virtual gun is being pointed at the temples of the account holders. It will be unfair to say that online banking theft is happening only in Malaysia, but it has been happening a lot here of late.
Two recent cases help explain the nature of the crime. An account holder loses RM300 — the only money she has left to see the month through — but on lodging a complaint to the bank, all it can say is: you can't get your money back. And online bank theft isn't just about RM300 or RM13. A nephrologist lost RM13,000 when she completed an online transaction. But upon complaining to the bank, she was told that the money could not be recovered.
Banks should not be so dismissive. After all, they are institutions in whom account holders place their trust. True, in some cases account holders can rightly be said to be negligent. Even naive. Here, too, banks can make their customers aware of the many ways scammers can access their accounts. Don't just hawk online banking. Tell customers of the dangers of online banking, too.
But to say money can't be recovered even before any investigation is to say that the banking system is infallible. To be blunt, it isn't. The spike in online banking theft is a case in point. Cybercriminals are quick with their latest scamware and so must be banks with their latest security system to prevent loss of deposits.
There is yet another banker's lethargy at play here: a very slow amble to resolution of customer complaints. If the Consumer Association of Kedah (CAKE) is right, there are still banks in this day and age insisting on 45 days to resolve a customer issue. Even in the brick-and-mortar age, this was still a saunter. What more now?
Except for very complex cases of bank fraud, seven days should be the limit. If a bank can't resolve an issue in a week, then its system is weak. What's weak needs to be strengthened. And at regular intervals, too. In the meanwhile, as CAKE suggests, there needs to be a one-stop centre to handle all online banking theft cases. If banks talk to each other, there is that much of a chance to recover lost deposits, the primary objective of the one-stop centre.
The government, too, appears to be on a stroll. At least as far as prevention of online banking fraud is concerned. Scammers and syndicates are shamelessly brazen because our laws bark more than they bite. The surge in mule bank accounts seems to suggest so.
Stiffer laws to punish bank customers who allow their accounts to be used and scammers who use them are urgently needed. Legislative lethargy only encourages cybercriminals to go for a bigger harvest. Laws that really bite will ensure that there is no harvest but thorns.
