ING reveals names using account numbers #bank #risk
Last week I saw an episode of a popular Dutch Ombudsman program Kassa, they revealed that it was possible to order goods online using only a name and account number, without verification using signature. (This makes use of the “eenmalige machtiging”, which is a single ‘authorized’ direct debit to an account.) And they wondered how these people were able to find names and account numbers which can be used in this scam.
Banks are constantly weighing customer needs, and security, which means that in the case of account numbers a number of banks are quite happy to correct the accountholder name when they know you have made a mistake, including my own bank ING. This is very user friendly, so when I type an account number 99999 and an incorrect accountholder name Smith the banking application happily corrects me – Schmidt – and asks me if I am sure that the name they have supplied is the correct one. This is a handy feature, which I also use often as the accountholder name contains more than just initials and surname, it also contains city of residence.
The danger comes when I type in an account number I don’t know the name of, such as 1 and enter a random string of characters and the bank gives me -S RIJKS SCHATKIST S GRAVENHAGE. (Which is the Dutch government’s bank account, just in case you wondered why the Dutch government bailed out the ING.) And this holds true for other accounts, which I won’t publish here as it probably violates my use of the banking application.
So you know next time you can just get the Dutch government to pay for all your online shopping.
Just now I discovered the whole www for exactly this kind of information. I thank you for your article that journey has an end now. You wrote the post in a very understandable way. So I say thanks and add your blog to my favorites right now. Enjoy the daytime
Tagesgeldkonditionen
February 11, 2010 at 8:28 am
Nice to see, this was obvious a quality post. In theory would like to be such a good writer too. It takes time to creat that informative and additionally lots of effort to write such a excellent article.
Jewell Largent
February 18, 2010 at 9:12 pm
Fantastic blog! I actually genuinely liked this way of seeing things – well-defined and concise, precisely what we like
Shayne Ka
March 5, 2010 at 7:54 am
the post seems to be very good and very much helpful to the people who are fed up with repeated searches for these kind of posts. Thank you very much.
Robyn Stride
July 2, 2010 at 1:43 pm