Johannesburg - A Sandton man who received a bank statement via e-mail, only to find that it was not his, says he is worried about Standard Bank’s security system.
There could be lots of trouble if the bank was not able to protect its clients’ confidential information and it fell into the wrong hands.
On Tuesday, Derrick*, a small-business owner, got an e-mail from the bank.
When he opened it, he saw that it was a bank statement. After he had gone through it, he realised the statement belonged to someone who lived in Cresta.
Derrick saw the man’s account balance, his residential and postal addresses, his card and account numbers, the things he had bought with his bank card, and the places he had bought these from.
The businessman said he had felt guilt on seeing the information, but was also outraged at what he called a blatant security breach, and wondered about the security ramifications of such a mistake.
He said South Africa was rife with crime and corruption, and that fraudsters did not need any more encouragement from banks making such mistakes.
Derrick said he was worried that his statement had been sent to someone else by mistake, saying he would not like his clients’ information nor his own to be compromised in that manner.
While Standard Bank had told him the mistake was a once-off failure, and not a mass distribution error, he was still shaken by the incident and the danger it could land his business in if it happened to him.
“I would not want my personal information to land in someone else’s hands. If that happened, that would be very bad because the person would see our revenue, our customers, and how much they were paying us. After getting that statement sent to me by mistake, I am scared that this could happen to me too,” he said.
Derrick added: “What happened is highly irregular, and I’m quite upset that I have seen someone else’s details. It’s highly unlikely that this is a once-off thing. It’s a serious security breach,” he said.
The SA Banking Risk Information Centre’s Bongani Diako said compromised information always carried the risk of people falling victim to bank crimes.
“It is for these reasons that bank customers are always urged to look after their personal information such as their IDs, bank card PINs, electronic banking login details and similar other personal information,” he said.
Standard Bank’s Kershia Singh said investigations showed that Derrick’s e-mail address was incorrectly linked. “This was an isolated incident and Standard Bank immediately rectified the matter.”
*Not his real name
The Star