The Shocking Truth about Bank Transfers
Before you make another bank transfer, read this story.
You’ll be glad you did.
My wife and I recently bought a house, which is super exciting!
Instead of buying an existing house we decided to build a new one.
We spent hours and hours on designing the house we wanted, while simultaneously checking that it fits in our budget, and that we could afford to borrow enough money for the mortgage.
It came time to pay our last deposit, which worked out to around $30,000.00.
The builder had emailed us a tax invoice, with their banking details to transfer the money to.
And so we opened the PDF invoice, double checked the BSB and Account numbers and transferred the money.
We were so proud of ourselves, making our dream of building a home a reality.
2 minutes later we received a call from our Bank.
Being a large transfer, they wanted to confirm that it was indeed us that initiated the transfer, which we confirmed.
They then asked how we got the account details from the builder, to which we answered, a PDF invoice they emailed to us.
Our hearts started beating faster and faster.
The bank then told us that there have been incidents where hackers have been able to modify the bank details on PDF’s that have been emailed.
It was at this point, where we looked at each other, and thought we had just lost $30,000.00.
All our hard work, and dreams of being home owners, were taken away in an instant.
The bank then said they would contact the receiving bank to confirm if the account actually belonged to the builder.
We waited patiently with our hearts in our mouths, until the phone rang again.
They confirmed it was indeed the correct bank account, our money was safe.
We looked at each other with a big sigh of relief.
I later did some research and found that the bank transfer system is actually very out dated and not very secure by today’s standards.
I also found an ABC news article talking about someone losing $70,000.00 by transferring money for their brand new Tesla, to a scammers bank account instead, because they were able to intercept and modify the PDF invoice that was emailed to them.
You can read more about that story through the link below;
Tesla urged to review its payment practices after two Australian buyers lose thousands to scammers
We were extremely lucky that we were not targeted by scammers this time around.
If we were, this story would have ended very differently.
The moral of this story is this,
If you have to make a large bank transfer, make sure you call the company to confirm the account numbers.
Most importantly, don’t call the number on the email or invoice, as this could have been modified by the hackers as well.
Call a publicly listed number or one that you have used previously to communicate with the company.
Until we have a better system for transferring money, make sure you tread lightly when making bank transfers.
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