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Lloyds halts cheeky password protest

27 August 2008 1 comment

Retired member

UK tabloid The Sun is reporting the story of a disgruntled Lloyds TSB customer who changed his phone and Web banking password to 'Lloyds is Pants', only for a member of staff at the high street bank to change it - without his consent - to 'No we are not'.

Apparently computer consultant Steve Jetley changed his password to 'Lloyds is Pants' after he had a run-in with the bank regarding a holiday insurance bill. He had been using the password for two years before someone at the bank took offence and changed it without his permission.

Subsequent attempts by Jetley to change his password to 'Lloyds is Rubbish', 'Barclays is Better' and 'Censorship' all failed. Jetley told The Sun that he hasn't registered a new password because he stilll trying to think of one that "can get past the censors".

According to the report, Lloyds has confirmed a staff member broke banking rules by changing a customer’s password without consent.

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Comments: (3)

A Finextra member

27 August 2008

As protests go it was quite low key - since presumably he didn't tell anyone else about his password. Now it's in the open let's hope lots of other people join in. Presumably 'Ll0yds is rubb1sh and their staff break the rules' would be ok since it contains a mix of alpha and numeric characters?

Were this my bank I'd have moved my account.

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Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra

27 August 2008

I wonder how many staff at the bank have access to customers' personal passwords. A security risk, surely?

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A Finextra member

27 August 2008

Another example of cowboys running the backroom infrastructure in the financial industry and illustrates why we have so many fraud problems.

There is a fundamental problem with the way Lloyds have designed their security and I wouldn't be surprised to see a few of their customers switch.

There is no reason any bank employee should ever have access to any customer's password.

I would assume any customers of Lloyds who have had any irregularities occur on their account will now have at least one valid reason to believe it was an inside job.

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