The question should be who has a duty to protect your banking details apart from you?

By the express provision of our Law books, it is the bank's exclusive responsibility to ensure that your banking details are safe and secured.

The position of the law is clear that every bank owes its customers a fiduciary duty of care to ensure that their banking details are safe. The bank also owes its customers a quincecare duty of care to ensure its accounts are not used as engines of fraud by fraudsters.

Your duty, on the other hand, is to ensure you read your messages from the bank, as the banks are by law mandated to educate their customers about recent happenings in the banking industry, including the latest antics of fraudsters.

If you have been reading your email and text messages, you would have observed that the banks have repeatedly warned their customers not to disclose their banking details to any member of the public posing as its staff or agent. All transactions must be conducted in the banking hall or via other authorized channels.

Even mobile banking apps and web addresses are being cloned right now, so ensure you activate a second step authentication protocol on your email.

It will save you a lot of stress. If a fraudster has unauthorised access to your online banking details, he will not be able to access the OTP that will be sent to your email if he has your email login details.

This is because he will be required to activate a second login protocol, and the fraudster might not be able to complete the login protocol without your phone.

But once you did not disclose your banking details to an unknown third party, you need not worry about how the fraudsters gained access to your details.

The question should be, now that you know, do you have a right to take it up with the bank?

The answer is yes, of course, you have an absolute right to question your bank for putting you in a precarious position. The bank covenanted not to share your details with third parties, not even a call centre, a merchant or other banking services providers, without lawful authority. If it does, it shall be held liable. And this is the position of the law.

I must, also not fail to state that once you deposit your money in your bank account, it becomes the bank's money. And it is, therefore, the bank's duty to ensure it adequately secures the money as the customer has a legal right to take up the bank if a third party has unauthorised access to such funds.

But what can you do if your account was debited without lawful authority?

@Uboma,@isilove and @mayberry , what do you guys think?

We will consider this shortly.

Sometimes I think it isn't ideal to keep one's money at the bank because of how porous their system is...

I have seen someone who did not apply for a debit card when she first opened a savings account with one of the banks but got her money stolen via web purchases.

I am thinking of porting to Standard Chartered Bank, so far, I have not heard negative reviews about them.

uboma:
Sometimes I think it isn't ideal to keep one's money at the bank because of how porous their system is...

I have seen someone who did not apply for a debit card when she first opened a savings account with one of the banks but got her money stolen via web purchases.

I am thinking of porting to Standard Chartered Bank, so far, I have not heard negative reviews about them.

The bank has a lot of explanation to do. I had a similar case wherein the client was saving for rent. Just a few days before the payment of her rent, her bank account was cleared.

Well! the good news is that after few months of litigation, the bank approached us for an out of court settlement. She was paid an extra 300k as damages after we executed a confidential,no-admission of plausible liability and discontinuance agreement.

I have this deep feeling that the banks know what to do in cases of unauthorized debits, but will usually wait to see what the client will do. Some will forget about it, while others will pursue their legal right.

Saw this a lot when I was handling e-fraud cases for some banks in my previous employment as head of litigation and business management. We were required to defend the banks with all we 've got and they paid well. I might resume defending the banks once more since the pay is good.


I will make how time for a thread on how a bank customer can prevent fraud on his/her bank account.

litigator:


The bank has a lot of explanation to do. I had a similar case wherein the client was saving for rent. Just a few days before the payment of her rent, her bank account was cleared.

Well! the good news is that after few months of litigation, the bank approached us for an out of court settlement. She was paid an extra 300k as damages after we executed a confidential,no-admission of plausible liability and discontinuance agreement.

I have this deep feeling that the banks know what to do in cases of authorized debits, but will usually wait to see what the client will do. Some will forget about it, while others will pursue their legal right.

Saw this a lot when I was handling e-fraud cases for some banks in my previous employment as head of litigation and business management. We were required to defend the banks with all we 've got and they paid well. I might resume defending the banks once more since the pay is good.


I will make how time for a thread on how a bank customer can prevent fraud on his/her bank account.

Unauthorized, you mean.

Wow! You have experience working for the e-fraud unit of a bank? Why didn't you say so all these while...?

@words in bold, this is where I have issues with Lawyers. You sometimes deny justice for the vulnerable ones because the other party, who is guilty, is greasing your palms.

uboma:



Unauthorized, you mean.

Wow! You have experience working for the e-fraud unit of a bank? Why didn't you say so all these while...?

@words in bold, this is where I have issues with Lawyers. You sometimes deny justice for the vulnerable ones because the other party, who is guilty, is greasing your palms.

Yes. Thank you for pointing it out. Have effected the necessary correction.


I didn't work for them directly. It was more or less like working with them. I was the head of litigation in a law firm that was under retainership with several banks and other corporate organization. The banks soon discovered my knowledge of e-fraud and started loading me with cases on that aspect of law.

My boss was not a litigator. He was more or less a solicitor. So I had all the cases for myself and my team. At the last count, we had over 300 cases that were giving us torrents of breathtaking braingasm. Especially tripartite mortgage cases that had SAN(s) on the other side.

I can't forget the sweaty palms and sleepless coffee-filled nights. But these are what forged me into a better litigator.

Nope! Justice is relative.

The fact that you are wrong does not mean I am right. And what you get at the end of the day, depends on what you know. You might have a bad case and your litigator will be able to get you out using technical justice. Especially in criminal cases. And you might have a good case and your litigator will mess up the case due to limitation of knowledge.

But let's say the bank's pay better, so we have all the resources we need at our disposal.

Most individual clients don't take their lawyer serious, much more make resources available, but they want the lawyer to perform legal magic. Stories and sympathy parties don't win cases, real evidence and knowing how to use such available evidence is what counts.

Even Jesus, in turning water into wine, needed a pot and some jugs of water. It's that simple.