Tag: BANKS

In case you forgot, much of the world is mired in an economic recession. Believe it or not, a lot of folks aren't thrilled with the prospect of civilization as we know it crumbling into chaos, and they're starting to let the big banks know it. According to BBC News, over a three-month period, a hacker known as "Neo" stole documents that detailed the confidential financial records of about 1,000 ...

digg_url ='http://www.switched.com/2010/01/08/bank-robbers-busted-by-gps-equipped-cash/'; In what sounds like a plot from a bad comedy, three Illinois bank robbers were busted by cops who followed them using a GPS device hidden within the stolen cash. It's part of a new security measure that could make solving robberies much simpler. According to The Chicago Tribune, Timothy Rucker, 33, ...

It's no secret that cyber attackers are striking at an alarming rate -- from breaching government computers to stealing millions from ATMs. Now, The Wall Street Journal reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating the cyber theft of tens of millions of dollars from banking and insurance giant Citigroup, Inc. Anonymous government officials told the Journal that the ...

Remember the story about the New Zealand authorities who located a fugitive couple, thanks to the misguided Facebook status of their relative? While that mistake was out of the criminals' hands, Maxi Sopo made his own bed with the social networking site. In 2003, Sopo went from selling roses in Seattle nightclubs to committing bank fraud, making him about $200,000 richer. A natural career ...

Don't feel bad if you've recently fallen for an e-mail scam. They're not always easy to identify. Just ask FBI Director Robert Mueller. Mueller received an e-mail from his bank asking him to verify some account information. After entering said information, Mueller says he realized that the e-mail was part of a phishing scam. According to CNET News, he immediately changed his passwords and breathed ...

In a strange twist on a now familiar story, an English woman last May found that her bank account had been accessed by criminals and that the money therein had increased. Amanda Fothergill, 40, of Darlington, received a phone call from a stranger who claimed to have deposited a substantial amount of money in her account. Shocked, Fothergill checked her balance only to discover a brand new deposit ...

You might want to keep a closer eye on those bank statements. Hackers have developed a sophisticated and scary program that quickly alters online bank statements in order to hide exactly how much money cyber-crooks have been siphoning from the account. According to Wired, the malware, called URLZone, infects a computer when the user visits a compromised site, or a site set up by hackers. Then, ...

Finder's keepers is a refrain echoed on playgrounds, but a Dutch woman might soon use it as her defense in the courtroom. According to DutchNews, a man from Wageningen, The Netherlands made a costly error while trying to transfer funds from his bank account to his son's. With one wrong keystroke, the man sent about $63,500 to a woman's account in Almelo. While most sane folks would simply return ...

All it took for thousands of Rocky Mountain Bank customers' confidential information to be compromised was one unlucky employee's slip of the mouse. Now, the bank is scrambling to protect its customers, but Google isn't cooperating. According to Wired, Rocky Mountain Bank is suing Google to reveal the identity of a Gmail account holder who mistakenly received an e-mail containing a bank ...

Nobody likes making a trip to the bank, with its long lines, stacks of forms and slips, and blandly innocuous Top 40 playlists. For customers of the Texas bank USAA, though, avoiding a visit to the bank is about to get a whole lot easier. The New York Times reports that USAA bank will allow its customers to deposit checks using the bank's own iPhone app starting some time this week (The bank ...

Cybercrime spans the entire globe, and, until now, there's been little collaboration between nations when it comes to combating international networks of hackers. The Wall Street Journal reports on the newly formed European Electronic Crime Task Force -- a Rome-headquartered effort between the United States and the European Union. The group is backed by the muscle of the U.S. Secret Service, an ...

If at all possible, we here at Switched avoid making trips to the bank; on the fun-meter, the visits rank right up there with going to the dentist. Long lines, annoying forms, and rude tellers waiting for us once we walk in the door tend to be the normal experience, and it appears we aren't the only folks that feel this way, either. CNET News writes of a recent survey by the Gartner Group that ...

Technology just keeps making it harder and harder for stupid criminals to make a dishonest living these days -- even if they're wearing disguises and driving fancy getaway cars. According to an AP report appearing on Cellular-News.com, Delroy George Henry, a 34-year-old Boston resident dressed in a suit and driving a BMW, acted as if he were making a withdrawal at a Boston-area bank Tuesday ...

It's bad enough when your credit or debit card is rejected, but imagine if you tried to make a large purchase and were declined due to a computer glitch. That's what happened to customers of Barclays bank across southern England when a "faulty disc array" took out 1,500 ATMs along with phone and Internet banking services, altogether preventing merchants from processing purchases. According to ...

A man used hacking software to steal more than $100,000 from banking and brokerage accounts over a six-month period in 2007, according to Macworld. Alexey Mineev recently plead guilty to one count of money laundering in U.S. District Court. Mineev stole account numbers and passwords from users with a Trojan horse, which can pose as anything from a security patch to a screensaver. Then, he wired ...