So what’s new? NUS had their servers hacked. Thankfully, the bunch of hackers who hit on NUS were just pissed off with a “rude” message that greeted them when they made their initial attempt. Had there been no such message, the hackers would have given up and gone somewhere else. The “offending” message made them determined to wreck havoc with the site. Luckily, they were just blowing off steam and not all out to destroy NUS for personal benefit.
But now, our biggest and most ya ya bank DBS/POSB is seeing an even more serious breach of security. A friend of mine and her husband just told us on Facebook that money has been stolen from their accounts. Lord Buddha! All hell is going to break loose if everybody decides to push his own panic button. According to the bank, “hundreds” of customers have been affected. The cause of the breach is still under investigation. Does this mean that nothing definitive has been done to prevent similar acts? Panic.
Toothfully, I think people are not just scared. They are also angry. You join the ridiculously long queues at the banks this festive season. You deposit your money there, thinking that it will be safe. And they even make you pay for the “safekeeping”. But what happened? Some crook withdraws money from your account from an ATM in Malaysia. And unlike the hackers who broke into NUS servers, these crooks are obviously all out to steal money from DBS/POSB customers. They won’t stop until the hole is plugged or they get arrested.
If your money is stolen, you’ve got to waste time to join an even more horrendous queue of victims like you to just to get back the money that the bank has lost for you. Toxic assets, floating rates, service charges, hardsell of investment packages with little or no yield …. How much more nonsense can we take from the banks?
And it doesn’t stop with banks. The other day, Singtel called me up and tried to get me to upgrade my plan with them. Ah! I’ve been trying to downgrade my plan for a while, but I can’t stand being put on hold for hours. How nice of them to catch up with me and attend to my needs. But the moment I told the caller that I want to downgrade my plan, she said: “Thank you for your time, bye bye.”
Huh? You mean the caller was only interested in selling a plan that would make me pay more than what I’m paying now? She’s not really interested in serving me and attending to my needs? And all the telcos out there do the same. Why? Because there is no real competition in this land. This only leave the “protected” industries to prosper regardless of how they treat their customers and “unprotected” ones (like dentistry), it’s the same old Cantonese saying: “lei sei lei ge si“.
Have a great weekend. Don’t faint in the queue.
