| British Banks keep a secret.. |
|
|
|
| Tuesday, 05 December 2006 | ||||
|
The senior police officer Russell Day of the metropolitan Police, declared yesterday to an all-party parliamentary group that many banks fail to denounce episodes of identity fraud because on the one hand they are worried about a potential decrease in customers confidence and on the other they do not trust in the ability of the police to deal with cyber crime. "Financial institutions are not reporting it [these attacks] to law enforcement [agencies], and there could be two reasons for that. It could be one of consumer confidence, but I think that to be honest it is their lack of confidence in law enforcement to deal with it. And they are right. Because of the global nature of this, it doesn't fit in with our priorities," he stated. According to Nigel Evans, the Tory MP who chaired the hearing, these declarations show that if all the episodes concerning online frauds were disclosed, the costs for UK economy would be higher than the official figure of £1.7bn a year, that was released by the UK's National Consumer Council (NCC). The choice not to report these attacks convey another problem, indeed “it makes it much more difficult to give a proper estimate as to how huge the problem is," Mr. Evan said, and he added the assumption that “the financial institutions lose the money and pass on the bill to customers." Detective Day, who works in the Met's economic and e-crime unit, told that "botnets" - networks of infected home computers that can be used to launch attacks and send out spam emails- are one of the biggest threats to UK online banking system. In 2006 it was recorded a hike in identity frauds that amounted to £22.5m in the first six months of this year - up 55% on the £14.5m of losses during the same period last year. The attacks involved Phishing scams and fake emails from British banks that were sent to thousands of people in an attempt to get security information. The all-party commission that summoned this meeting was created one year ago to monitor the trends and developments on identity fraud. The group includes a number of MPs that have themselves been victims of identity theft.
Powered by a Zone-H(ified) version of AkoComment 3.0! DISCLAIMER: Forum postings are the opinion of the posting author alone, and should not be taken as the opinion of Zone-h. The author is entirely and solely responsible for all content that he/she uploads, posts, or otherwise transmits via the website. Zone-h is not responsible for such content. However, Zone-h shall have the right, but not the obligation, to delete, move, or edit any content that violates this agreement or is otherwise objectionable as determined by Zone-h in its sole discretion and without notice. |
||||
A number of British financial institutions deliberately chose not to report cyber fraud incidents to the police in order to prevent any damage to their reputation. This astonishing revelation was reported today by the newspaper 
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
