It’s a difficult one because I understand the arguments of people being panicked or not thinking straight, but ultimately I can’t disagree with anything @ndrw has said in that if you have been provided with a message not to share this code and you share it, there is only so much the bank could have done. “Never share this” and “your bank will never ask for this” are as clear as clear can be. If your bank was worried about the security of your account, they wouldn’t need your interaction to block it. It’s not like the bank staff are watching a screen with money being drained, frantically calling the customer so they can stop it, as if there’s just nothing the bank can do about it otherwise.
I also don’t really buy the argument that it’s new technology and people struggle, as at this point none of it is really new. Phone banking has been around since the 1980’s, internet banking the 1990’s, and I don’t believe that if someone phoned you up in 1996, when there would have been no way to verify it, saying “Hi, this is your bank, we need you to transfer money to this account to prevent it being stolen from your own account, as somehow we, your bank, cannot do anything about this risk ourselves”, that you’d have been any less suspicious of that than you would be today and would have happily done it. So the awareness of people phoning you up to scam you surely cannot be a new phenomenon that people are having to understand for the first time. More prevalent and devious, sure, but not new?
There’s other things in life where people ignore obvious warnings. People ignore warning lights on their car’s dashboard, people disconnect smoke alarms when they keep beeping, people ignore no entry signs and walk or drive across level crossings when there’s a barrier down and big red lights flashing. But you don’t blame the warning signs not being adequate, you blame the person for ignoring them. So if you’re using a banking app and there’s a clear message saying “do not share this with anyone, ever” and your decision is to share it, then you’ve chosen to ignore the safeguard the bank has put in place.
Even if you had to go in branch, take your birth certificate and a sample of DNA to conclusively prove without question that you are you, and you yourself are making that transaction, if the account you’re transferring the money to told you they’re a Nigerian prince or it’s someone you met around the corner claiming they’re from the RSPCA and need £5,000 from you, and you’ve still gone in and asked the bank to make the transfer, what more could they possibly do. So dialling it down from an extreme analogy to what we have, if they’re sending you codes covered in warning labels and you ignore them, physically what more can they do.
it is all a risk though. Not clear if it’s specific platforms or just all types.
