Security

Yes, I agree, it's becoming absurd. My DD, who has just married and changed her name, is trying to get a passport in her new name for a very imminent holiday and the passport office is demanding a bank statement and the bank won't give her one without the passport which is now in transit.

Incidentally, i have had two phone calls recently, saying that my credit card has been used illicitly for a transaction, and I have just hung up on them and checked with my bank. Both were scams.
Never believe, or follow-up, what you are told on the phone or by email. Always check for yourself. No doubt, if I had continued with the calls, they would have tried to get information that would allow them to access my account.

M0nica. You are right. I am very grateful to the two banks i have used. They have both bent over backwards to help me in difficult circumstances when a Builder defrauded me. one in particular could not have been more considerate or understanding and I am really grateful to them. I had no idea that a major bank could look after an oldie like me like this. On the phone the people are so kind too. It has been wonderful what they have done to help.

GreenGran78.

Very good advice!

Always contact your bank on your own phone or by putting their address into your computer yourself.

Make sure your computer has not "remembered" the last address it had of the bank which was the one the scammer gave.
If necessary, clear your computer's cache (look into "History" in your web browser,) or open another page and check carefully that you have got a new address.

It is terribly frustrating when we are going round in circles because one needs our passport and our passport application needs our address proof and another needs something else...

But really we must remember to whom we need to address our frustration!

It is the criminals who have made this situation.

Not the Banks or Passport office or whatever...

The Banks do so much to try and keep us safe, but the criminals are so wicked and always looking for ways to get ahead of them.

I am still grateful that my banks have phoned me to say there has been some unusual activity on my card. I always phone back - never accept the first call. But each time it has been the bank and there has been a wicked person who may have watched me putting in my code or something. I am impressed by how quickly they notice when my account is being used differently. wait must be so difficult to keep updating their computer systems to keep abreast of the fraudsters. We live in an age of many very dishonest people.

Just an added thought, before you phone back either make a call to someone other than your bank and check the line has been cleared or use a different phone. Scammers are very good at letting you think you are making a new call when they are still on the line.

I had great trouble paying a tax bill because my Bank did not want to do the transfer as it's a common scam and I didnt have a history of paying HMRC. Well no, it was a one off CGT bill which I explained and also that it was expected and I had double checked the details. They made me jump through all sorts of hoops and still didnt want to let me pay...

Even with all this extra security people still get fraudulent transactions made on their bank accounts.

Bank fraud is endemic. The crooks are at it 24/7. A lot of money is lost. As soon as one method is stopped another crops up which means the fraud teams in banks and creditcard companies have to be on their toes all the time.

There is no way of stopping this so far. Therefore we all need to be patient. And we can help ourselves by letting the bank/card company know in advance of any unusual transaction you will be making.

It is no use blaming anyone except the crooks.

Pamela
This happened to me in the past month.
I was checking my bank account and saw 2 withdrawals of £2.50 and £3.75. I didn't recognise the company name so checked them out. They were both car parking companies.
I knew straight away what was going on.
Cancelled all cards pronto.

I was involved in some money laundering once. I washed my husbands work trousers with his pay packet still in the pocket. We had £1 notes (remember those?), £5 notes and £10 notes arranged all over various surfaces to dry. Hadn't been married long and he never let me forget it

Just thought I'd lighten things up a bit

It is the criminals who have made this situation

Heaven knows! There is more money laundering than ever before. Banks have been caught out facilitating money laundering on a huge scale and just get a rap over the knuckles.

I opened a Savings account next door to work. I use that address for post as I live on a boat.
I was called in and asked to close my account as they weren’t happy with my address not being permanent. ( your nobody without a postcode)
It seems I could be a money launderer. Yeah like £750 made me the mafia

When DH & I sold our house in 2011 we went into the Bank the following day to transfer money for our new home (mobile/park home) & 10% of purchase price to Park Owner. We were asked where the money had come from. The "little devil" on my should whispered "tell them drug dealing!!", I thought perhaps better not & produced a letter from our Solicitor giving sale details.

I still wonder what would have happened if I'd listened to that "little devil"

I was doing an online BACS transfer to pay for a holiday and my bank's fraud section phoned and asked if I knew what I was doing, who the payee was and what the money was for. All this within about a minute of me trying to make the transaction. They blocked the transfer until they were sure it was genuine.

Last week mine and my husband’s bank cards were stopped when we attempted to buy foreign currency. A phone call to the bank eventually freed them both up but it was apparently done because fraudulent transactions are taking place where elderly people are conned into buying currency for the fraudsters. I pointed out that it is the main holiday season and not unreasonable to need currency! Also, earlier this year, same bank, we were both questioned and asked what we needed to transfer some money for. We were asked what we were buying and whilst I understood they were trying to protect us, it did seem a bit intrusive to want to know what we were using the money for.

I think asking why you want the money is a bit much - what's a scammer going to say -
A. I'm money laundering
B. Drug dealing
C. Buying a car/holiday/something else
My other point is that security is just so complicated that genuine customers are being prevented from accessing their own accounts. Online purchases now involve a six digit verification code texted, every single time. If you are not having this at the moment, then you soon will be

Narrowboatnan, the currency notes that we now use, should make it much easier to launder money these days.

Daisymae, we have recently ordered a new car, and will be moving money from one account to another, so that we can pay by bank transfer.
I suppose we may well be asked what we are up to!

Many years ago I was impressed by a phone call, while we were still in the shopping centre car park, checking that it was us who had spent quite a lot of money on electrical goods. It was in the early days of mobile phones and it was a miracle I had it on me!

I worked in a bank for 19 (mostly horrible) years and developed an instinct for when something was wrong. One young man was taken away in handcuffs when he tried to take money out of a friend's account and I caught him. My OH and I went for a drink in the local a few days later and there he was with his mates! I made sure we weren't followed home.

Another time an elderly person was trying to take a large amount of cash out and I was worried about her. I asked the manager to take her somewhere private to check and it turned out she had been conned.

Not only criminals have caused this . Much of the suspicion is around things like drawing out a large amount of cash to pay a tradesman “ cash in hand” . He does not bank the cash and pays no tax or VAT on the transaction. Of course people don’t see it as tax fraud “ it was a friend of a friend” but it absolutely is .

sorry to disagree but yes i have been asked this question and politely said mind your own business and was told to give any answer even if no true, it is ridiculous

I trid at age 59 to get a passport for ID purposes, gave up after being told I had to drive 150 miles to have an interview so that I could be assessed to be british and a resident. this was despite being a former pollice officer and working for the prison service. I have a photo driving licence but that wasn't good enough.

I think that asking someone what they are doing with the money doesn’t need to be like an interrogation. It can be asked in a friendly, just passing kind of way , as it was when I gave a statement to the police .

The teller just casually said something like “ oh that’s an awful lot of money to walk home with Mr X, may I ask are you doing something nice with it ?” and it all went on from there . I never got the call I was promised from the police to tell me the outcome even though I worried about it for weeks . Typical .

I can’t understand why people “get on their high horse” about being asked what they plan to do with large cash withdrawals.
Obviously bank staff aren’t doing it for fun or being nosey. They are obliged to ask the proper questions in order to guard against fraud, money laundering and tax evasion.

I always make a small payment first when transferring money online to a new payee, and check they’ve got it before paying the main amount, so I can make sure I haven’t got the details wrong. Once when I did this I got a call from Barclays asking me to confirm it was me and saying it was a well-known scam technique. I told them it was recommended by Which? Magazine and in any case the scam was related to card payments, not online transfers.

They did say they had rung me because of my age. I told them that despite my age I knew enough about security to know that your mother’s maiden name (the ‘security’ question that asked) is not considered sufficiently secure these days, but apparently they can’t change it!