Online Attacks on Tesco Bank Make 20,000 People Lose Their Money

Online banking came to make our lives easier: with only a few clicks money can be transferred, while you sit back from the comfort of your couch. However, just like with everything that is manageable online, it can be a target for hackers also to spy on, and potentially steal not only your information, but your money too. That was exactly what happened during the weekend of November 5th 2016: the British Tesco Bank was attacked by cybercriminals, which resulted in thousands of client accounts getting affected, with some people losing all their money – making the bank suspend all online transactions. The bank’s chief executive, Benny Higgins, apologized for such events in a note published on the Tesco Bank’s first page, saying that the institution is sorry for the “worry and inconvenience” caused to their clients.

The numbers of the attacks

When talking about banks: the greater the name, the bigger the impact of such scenarios on clients. Tesco clients complained during the weekend, that money started to get deductedfrom their accounts without any permission, and reported their cards being blocked. The company also received complaints regarding their mobile application, as the users experienced huge delays.

With that being said, it is estimated that around 40,000 people were affected, with at least half of them finding only a big fat zero on their accounts the following Monday morning. The attack was believed to be related to online shopping, and led to a cybersecurity expert stating that: “this could be an unprecedented breach at a British bank”. Tesco Bank’s first measure was to put a halt on every online transaction, until proper investigations are finished. Nonetheless, clients who wanted to withdraw money or pay their bills were still able to do so.

VPN for online banking

Although an attack to a bank’s network is not only hard to predict, but in many cases even tougher to stop, by using a VPN you can be rest assured that you won’t get directly snooped around by others, while performing your online transactions. That’s actually only one of the reasons why you should cover your online footprints with a VPN. Apart from being able to circumvent geo-blocks, and providing some breach of liberty to those living under oppressive regimes, truth is that nowadays VPNs are close to becoming a requirement, not only for safe online banking, but even for general presence. With a VPN all your information is protected with top-notch, military grade encryptions and strong protocols, designed to disguise and cover your traffic from any hacker, or any third party: since you’ll be tunneling your traffic to a VPN secure server, owned by the company. VPNs are especially useful when connecting to public Wi-Fi networks. Since the vast majority of providers offer dedicated Android, iOS and even Windows Phone support, all your mobile banking will also be conducted safely.