Thomas Rajna, Claremont
Robert Matzdorff, when commenting on my letter (“Poor service”, Tatler, February 11), wrote: “one’s bank obviously cannot be held responsible for closing down fraudulent websites” (“Be cautious when banking on line” Tatler, February 18).
Clearly I have higher expectations from my bank.
More to the point, Standard Bank themselves, as I quoted in my letter, make the proud claim that they always take action to close down any fraudulent website reported to them. So they are not in a position to back up your defence.
My exasperation springs from the fact that I have been reporting these scam mails for years, but Standard Bank virtually ignored my posts and allowed the identified and reported phishing to carry on indefinitely.
They urge the public to report banking crime, then disregard the evidence, appear to take no action and so the same scams continue to flourish unhindered.
The dedicated anti-phishing site of Standard Bank sends out an automated response which brushes off my phishing complaint with the classic ploy of stating that they only deal with phishing complaints.
So much for automated responses, richly irrelevant and useless, but guaranteed to discourage most of those troublesome complainers.
Years of frustration honed my “fiery” protest.
I still think it is a civic duty to supply information that helps the suppression of fraud and crime and to speak up for the many gullible people who could be robbed of their life savings by cyber gangsters.
I cannot agree with Mr Matzdorff’s view that there is no need to be concerned as scams are nothing new and it is up to the individual to exercise “due diligence”.
It is an ungrateful task to have to chivvy one’s own bank to protect themselves and their customers without ever achieving any feed-back, but not doing anything at all is not likely to improve the state of our sick society.
