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Victims of internet bank fraud will have to pay up
BANKS will no longer honour the debts of victims of internet fraud after a sudden rise in attacks against online accounts, The Times has learnt. Britain's 14 million internet bank customers have faced a month of intense bombardment from fraudsters trying to access online accounts in devious "phishing" scams. Around 60 such frauds, each generating hundreds of thousands of e-mails, were detected in October — a 33 per cent increase from September. MessageLabs, an internet security company, is currently intercepting 50,000 messages and 80 to 100 phishing websites a day. Banks are not insured against the losses and have to compensate victims themselves. They paid out more than £4.5 million in refunds to approximately 2,000 fraud victims in the first half of this year. Some police officers have recommended users to abandon internet accounts altogether. Up to now, British banks have automatically refunded money to victims, regardless of how obvious the fraud was and how much the customer was at fault. Posted by: Mark Espinola 2004-11-14 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=48760 |