Protecting your money Today I went and made a somewhat large withdrawal from Alpine CU, to put it into my higher interest rate savings account at Zions. They gave me the money I asked for, but did not ask for the password I had created earlier, to prevent an arbitrary person from withdrawing money from my account. This is the second time this has happened at alpine CU. To today's teller's credit, she did ask for my drivers license first, but the previous one (in A.F.) did not ask for anything. When I asked the teller why she hadn't asked for my password, she said there was a sticky note covering that corner of the screen, so she didn't see it. I called the credit union and spoke to a manager there, and was disappointed to learn that they cannot enforce that the password be obtained prior to a withdrawal. They can make the password area flash, or alternatively they can lock the account such that any transaction requires a supervisor to do it, but they can't force a password to be entered before distributing funds. The manager did say that my account was insured, and so if any money was withdrawn without my approval, they would credit it back as soon as they verify that it wasn't me. But I'd prefer my money be safe on its own. Isn't that one of the major reasons I put my money in a bank, instead of under my bed? I told the manager I would expect a system that could require a password be entered. He didn't have much to say about that, other than that my money was insured.

Comments

Gramps said…
Yea, too bad the US is falling behind European countries in things like this. In Europe, you need a PIN to use your credit card and access your account. You can't do anything without it. Here in the US the "rules" just seem to be getting lax. I'm constantly amazed that the banking industry and the government won't do more to prevent identity theft.

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