Heather du Plessis-Allan: Banks need to step up their online security

I don’t think that banks should have to refund people who've lost money in scams. But come on... they really need to step it up on the security stuff. The banks announced today that they are going to take a look at doing something pretty basic. Which is to make sure that when you think you are sending money to someone and you type … a... I don’t know…let’s say the Labour Party into the payee field. That the account it’s going into is actually an account held by the labour party, not by... I don’t know... a Nigerian prince. Come on. They don’t need waste time investigating whether they need to do this; they just need to do it. It's basic. Banks in other countries do it. Consumer NZ reckons when the UK did it they noticed a 10% drop off in fraudulent bank transfers. In the Netherlands, it was 81%. That's massive. Even the fact that the banks are saying they are going look at it, it’s an admission that they know on some level it will make a difference. Frankly some of our banks are so sloppy with their security it would make the IT team in our office tear their hair out. BNZ last time I checked didn’t even do multifactor authentication. Which is when you try to transfer a large amount of money, they send you a text with a code you have to enter to make sure it’s you. I was really shocked to hear that because I bank with ASB who does it all the time. The banks also today said they are going to stop sending texts to people with internet links in them. I mean honestly... that’s security 101. That is basically inviting a scammer to do the same thing pretending to be the bank and then rip people off. As I say I don’t think banks should pay people back if they lose their own money. But just step the security up to at least not be embarrassing.LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.