Starling Discussion & Feedback

Haha I just wondered with your username :wink:
It’s not an awful piece but really offers no solutions as basically everything he said has issues. Maybe prompt for pin on first login as well?

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Prompting for a PIN at first login would be a useful second factor and make the process more secure.

Personally, given the insecurity of email both in transit and at rest, I wouldn’t consider magic links to be appropriate at all. Perhaps it could be a choice to enable or disable, as those with password managers already have a system in place to store a vastly more secure password.

I was about to ask how your train set was coming on, having assumed the same :rofl:

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I have a UK passport and also had the video appointment with the whole “Rotate it, open it, hold it” process - most irritating.

Perhaps they got rid of it later. It certainly wasn’t a good first impression.

Getting an LPA was the best thing my parents did with my sister. Just being able to handle banks, bills, doctor’s appointments and pharmacies has made it so much easier.

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As to The video - I wonder if something should be raised around the Equalities Act for this (another autistic here, and had to reinstall recently -ugh), it’s potentially denying access due to disability?

Out of interest, what would a ‘reasonable adjustment’ be, in your view (as you’ll know, this is what banks are required to make for customers with differing needs)?

In the case of FD (as @eden raised), as they are part of the HSBC banking group, I suspect they feel they can say ‘go to a HSBC branch’ if you are unable to use phone / Internet banking and that may constitute a reasonable adjustment in some cases.

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:joy: Definitely not an improvement for autistics!

A reasonable adjustment would probably be for someone else to take a photo of the applicant and certify the likeness, maybe doing a selfie themselves

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Are you involved in modern-day slavery? Sounds perfect for that industry to take a picture and self-certify their likeness and intentions on their behalf.

Sounds reasonable as a suggestion but it’d leave many open to abuse because of it.

I was thinking more in the context of a lasting power of attorney, not just anyone off the street!! :joy:

Maybe also a registered professional, like a GP, who knows the individual?

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I was flat refused when I offered to pop in to show my ID instead of having to post the original documents for opening a FD account a year ago.

Since this is good enough for getting a passport, it sounds good to me.

By using say a GP you should be able to confirm a diagnosis of ASD (or other reason to need to use alternative identification procedures), thus preventing fraudsters trying to self-declare ASD to try and obtain accounts by deception.

Did you declare a disability as the reason for wanting to do this, or was it just because you didn’t want RM to misplace your passport?

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The whole verification thing is not ideal from a user experience standpoint but given that we don’t have alternatives (our government is stuck in the dark ages and can’t issue an ID smartcard capable of doing cryptographic signatures), a selfie/video seems like the best alternative.

I’m surprised people make such a big issue out of it. I understand not liking your appearance and not taking selfies for the typical purposes of a selfie, but this is for ID verification and nothing else - nobody cares about how you look as long as it roughly matches what’s on your ID and won’t be exposed anywhere (and if the bank gets hacked I’d be more worried about all the other PII in there instead of a picture). What’s the big deal, and in this case would you also refuse to take a photo for your passport/ID to begin with?

Regarding GP-provided ASD diagnoses, how do you authenticate that? Given that we’re discussing a method of verification to protect against fraud, we also need to make sure the method that would opt you out of that verification is itself secure.

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The anxiety can be off the scale to the point where someone with ASD may prefer to stay in a room, starving and in squalid conditions rather than pop down to the corner shop.

This is likely to stop even those with a less severe condition opening an account.

GPs don’t diagnose ASD, thank god. They may refer for diagnosis, but you would have to provide your diagnosis to the GP for them even to know about it. Normally, they’ll know because they need to help manage comorbidities, but not everyone tells their GP.

Solid indirect evidence for adults is usually in the form of some form of benefits certificate, not the diagnosis itself.

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My point is that how does the bank verify that 1) whoever wrote that document you provided as “proof” is indeed a GP, 2) how do they find out the GP’s real contact details (they shouldn’t be trusting the details printed on the document itself).

If a bank were to implement this, their KYC process now only becomes as secure as their process for authenticating the exemption letters and the process for writing the exemption letters in the first place (what if the GP is crooked and issues them fraudulently, are there any checks in place for that even?).

I disagree on this. A video selfie is actually a pretty neat ‘digital signature’ that a bank can ask for at a future point (e.g. when you want to raise your limits, take out a loan, etc). I would think that they’re pretty difficult to fake (and, if you did fake a video, the bank would have perfect video footage of the criminal).

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Given the rise of deepfakes, it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility of someone making a video of “you” for verification. You’d have no recourse as “you” are the one in the video, right? :face_with_monocle:

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Running the app in an emulator with an emulated video input isn’t beyond the realm of possibility if we’re talking bank account takeover using deepfakes. Granted, unlikely, but not impossible.

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I did yes, I don’t see why I couldn’t have spoken to someone in a HSBC branch.

All this has gone waaay off topic :grimacing:

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