Bad Credit Loans, Bad Credit Home Loans – Bad Credit Finance Australia

Credit card fraud and bank account fraud is rife in Australia. One of the methods used by thieves is having a skimming device fitted at the “mouth” of the ATM machine to copy the person’s card details. A micro-camera would capture the pin number as the person keys it in. The gang would have then transferred the skimmed data to a counterfeit card and the robberies were easily perpetrated remotely in many cases by thieves located overseas.Most new ATM machines in Australia have shields placed onto their key pads, or are chip and pin “capable”. That is, they use computer chips to store information rather than the more easily-cloned magnetic stripes. All Australian ATMs must be chip and pin “capable” by January 1, 2011.

While bank fraud victims are generally compensated by their bank fairly quickly, the experience is traumatic and can stay with you for some time.

All Banks, credit unions and building societies must subscribe to the Electronic Funds Transfer Code, which protects consumers who use electronic banking such as ATMs and Eftpos, or telephone and internet banking, to transfer funds. This does offer some form of protection.

The Australian Securities and Investment Commission has a detailed “Fido” page on its website, which clearly details the rights of customers – and the obligations of banks – when fraud occurs.

The ANZ Bank offers a Fraud Money-Back Guarantee which will fully re-credit a customer’s account “as long as they have not contributed to the loss and have notified the bank promptly”. The bank will reimburse claims of up to $10,000 within five business days of receiving completed documentation.

The rules and responsibilities around bank fraud perpetrated online, are far less clear. Who is responsible where Customers respond to a convincing “phishing” email,  -  is it the fault of the bank or personal negligence on the customer’s part?

Generally common sense must prevail. If you receive an email with links to your bank, PayPal or any other website that requires a login to an account, it is clearly a very high risk behavior on behalf of the customer.

Banks claim their protective technology is now more proactive than reactive. NAB claims that they can now detect 90 per cent of fraud cases “within minutes or seconds”. The big four banks use technology that throws up red flags when transactions fall outside the customer’s normal usage patterns – patterns based on geography, amount and time.

There are now also extra layers of security such as tokens which display changing numbers that must be punched in to complete an online transfer, as well as SMS alerts to inform customers of any large money movements.

There are times when the bank will question the validity of a fraud, and in these situations, things may not go so smoothly. Small says a bank has to protect itself from false “victims” and the bank has a highly trained team of fraud examiners which will question customers – politely, of course.