ID theft at Absa is a first in SA crime logs

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Edward West July 22 2003 at 07:58AM
Cape Town - The theft of the identities of three Absa customers to access their Internet banking accounts appeared to be the first crimes of this kind in this country, but a recent survey in the United States has claimed that seven million American adults have been victims of identity theft over the past year.Richard Peasey, Absa group information security officer, said it was too early to say the crime had been nipped in the bud and it was unlikely all banks and institutions would admit to being affected by this kind of fraud.Nevertheless, Absa and the rest of the banking industry were working together to combat this new crime. Absa's own internet banking security had not been breached.

Absa's share price dipped 20c to R35,80 on Monday, but it sank as low as R35,40 in early trade on Tuesday morning in reaction to news that three Absa clients had money removed from their accounts after a fraudster managed to gain unauthorised access to their computers and load software, called key-stroke logging software, which automatically copied everything they typed on their computers and sent it back to the fraudster without their knowledge. A further six cases were under investigation.An analyst said bank shares were generally lower on Monday on profit taking, as the sector had risen relatively strongly in the past few weeks.Roland Le Sueur, Internet banking head at First National Bank (FNB), said security on FNB's Internet banking system had not been compromised.Apart from security awareness programmes, FNB notified clients by SMS every time a banking transaction took place, a unique procedure in the local market which greatly added to security for the client.A statement from Standard Bank said: "To our knowledge, we have not had an event similar to the Absa incident." The bank stressed that clients should always protect their personal identification numbers (PINs) and passwords.Gartner Research, the world's biggest technology research house, said a survey in May showed that about 3,4 percent of all US consumers, or seven million adults, had been victimised by identity theft last year. Only 5 807 arrests were made by the FBI, the US Secret Service and the US Postal Service in 2000, the last year of available data."Even if it assumed that arrests doubled, which is highly unlikely, the criminal still has a one in 700 chance of getting caught by federal authorities," the research note said.Research in the US showed that more than half of all identity theft were committed by criminals who had established relationships with their victims, such as family members, roommates, neighbours or co-workers.