Data leaks a real concern for all in online world

ONE can’t help but feel for Tasmanian Syed Rizvi who lost his life savings in an online banking scam before Christmas. Syed lost almost $40,000 in the scam when an online hacker logged into his online bank account remotely and changed the transfer limit from $1000 to $50,000 in the blink of an eye.

For most of us who do online banking, daily transfer limits are set low for good reason. Just in case someone does hack your system they can only move $1000 or $2000 a day.

It gives you time to cotton on that money is being taken from the account and alert authorities.

But for Syed he found out while he was driving his car when he received a notification that his transfer limit had been increased to $50,000.

Due to the shock he almost crashed his car.

But as he pulled over to log into his bank account to find out what was going on, he noticed that $30,000 had already been transferred.

He rang the bank to alert them, but while he was on hold another $9860 left his account.

The almost $40,000in savings was four years of hard work for Syed scrimping and saving to put a nest egg together to afford a food truck. The worst part was that he had no money for Christmas and had to borrow from friends and family just to fuel the car.

Now he is concerned he will not get his money back.

After not knowing how he was hacked, he did some investigating and found his information had been leaked on the dark web as part of the Medibank hacking scandal.

The information leaked included his passport, bank and email details. Syed’s horror story should be a wake-up for us all.

Too many people don’t take their online security seriously.

Passwords need to be updated regularly and details kept away from prying eyes.

And companies charged with looking after customers’ information need to take their responsibility seriously too. There is so much at stake for victims of this sort of crime.