Across the holidays, and until now, we saw a rise in even more stories of OTPs being requested out of nowhere, and scams happening through and across our banking system. It seems important to finally talk about my own story from early 2023, one that I feel is important to serve a public that is generally at the losing end of problems like this one which, by the way, is not necessarily the subscriber’s fault. Note too that I had the privilege to have legal assistance, and my lawyer had quickly sent word to the bank to contest their decision not give me back the money I lost.

That bank being Security Bank.

For a bit of context, I hold accounts across BDO, BPI, Metrobank, and Security Bank. This is not a measure of how much cash there is (haha), as it is a measure of how much interbank transfers cost (a whooping P25 pesos, at least), which is huge if you get, say, P900 peso cheques for your writing.

Now let me start by saying that across all these four banks, for the longest time, it was Security Bank that was my favorite. I thought it was the most secure bank across all the others I had. They call you to tell you when your ATM’s been cut because of questionable activity, and then tell you when the new card’s ready for pick-up. I had family who believed in Security Bank’s, uh, security, and I even got insurance with them because of it. It was for that reason that I also had most of my savings there, and have had it there for years. It’s also important to point out that when friends started to experience unauthorized transactions from other banks pre-pandemic, none of it was happening with Security Bank. So it was easy to believe that, well, it was secure.

Until it wasn’t. Early in 2023, when other banks already had multiple cases of OTPs being asked for by mobile numbers not connected with the banks themselves, I received a phone call that talked about my Security Bank account. The person knew all my details with the bank, including the last four digits of my account, the last time I did an online transaction, the last time I did a face-to-face bank transaction, even who I talked to in the bank to get my insurance. There was no reason to think this person was not from Security Bank. But here was the clincher: when the person asked for an OTP, it was not sent to my mobile number through an unknown or regular mobile number — which would have made me suspicious. Instead the OTP was sent through the number of Security Bank. The same one that sends me confirmation of my online transactions, the same number that sends OTPs. (more…)