My son, who is in his 20s, had his iPhone stolen on his way home earlier this year by two guys, one of whom told him he had a knife.with Halifax for £25,000. The loan was approved and issued by 11am and the money was transferred out of my son’s account and into someone else’s.
Our phones are stuffed with personal information that can provide crooks with the keys they need to enter the owner’s online banking — potentially allowing them to raid their accounts. I was mystified as to how your son’s phone could have provided such easy access to his bank account, especially as it required a PIN or facial recognition to operate it. A possible explanation was that, since your son said he had been on his phone at the time of the incident, the thieves could have retrieved useful data and acted before it locked itself.
This offered a partial explanation as to how a crook could have tricked Halifax, but the mystery remains, as the loan application required additional financial information that apparently was not stored on the phone. A Halifax spokesman says: ‘We have a great deal of sympathy for our customer as the victim of theft. It’s important that customers let us know as soon as possible if their details have become compromised and provide us with accurate information when making a fraud claim.I hope this case will prompt all readers to be careful about what can be accessed on their phones.