Fraud and Telco Responsibilities

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Fraud and Telco Responsibilities

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Handle9

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#2203762 23-Mar-2019 10:38

That makes sense.

Your tenant hasn't helped herself with her naive behaviour but I wouldn't have thought she had any criminal or civil liability.

Obviously she gets out of it with minimal fuss if she plays nice but she's not obliged to.

dejadeadnz

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#2203777 23-Mar-2019 12:03

Handle9:

IMO fault always lies with the bad person. I'm not a lawyer but the party who has been defrauded would be the bank/business party so it's their problem to recover their loss.

The person who's identity has been used hasn't done any direct or willful act that caused the loss. Definitely careless and naive but not legally liable IMO.

110% correct in this case. The idea of the law imposing a duty of care upon every person to safeguard their own details lest a fraudster gets the details out of them and is able to defeat the credit checking/identity checking controls of every potential service provider (and to make good their loss in the event the frauster succeeds) is absurd as a matter of law and public policy. The OP's tenant has done more than enough -- just e-mail the relevant police report to Spark and Spark needs to do the rest. If they continue with debt recovery procedures or refuse to correct their file on the tenant, they are very likely in breach of the Privacy Act and the Credit Reporting Privacy Code. In that case, a complaint should be made to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. If deemed serious enough, he may refer it to the Direct of Proceedings to take the case to the Human Rights Review Tribunal.

If I were Spark, I'd grow up quickly and get a handle on this. Orcon got done for a five-figure penalty at the HRRT after it ignored repeated requests/communications from the complainant that he had cancelled his services with Orcon and didn't owe them any money. Orcon then proceeded to put a note on his credit file and took various debt recovery actions. And then it got hit for six.

hio77

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#2203782 23-Mar-2019 12:12

To be clear, spark have very well versed processes in terms of fruad.

Please contact the team i posted link above. This goes to a backend team that are suited to handle these situations.

I do Appoligies for the poor experience on your first call. That's not expected experiences.

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raytaylor

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#2203785 23-Mar-2019 12:36

MichaelNZ:

@raytaylor

That is shocking but not surprising. I would advise everyone to avoid Harmoney.

Which CRA was this done with?

It was on the centrix report. Though centrix later came back and said there was no other way for Harmoney to perform the query at the time. They have since updated their query reason field in the form to state they are doing an identity check and it doesnt get processed the same way as a loan application. So no fault of harmoney and I cant blame them for it.

They need to perform the identity check for tax reasons before they can onboard you as an investor and one of the other agencies (cant remember which) also had shared info which I had to correct.

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nunz

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#2203833 23-Mar-2019 14:15

Talkiet:

Handle9:
Technofreak: It seems to me your tenant needs to be more careful. This problem all stems from her silly naive actions.

This may seem a bit harsh but to some extent you cannot expect Spark to solve other people's problems caused by their silly actions. It's not Sparks fault this has happened.

The tenant is definitely naive but she hadn't committed fraud or stolen anything from anyone.

Spark entered into a contract with a fraudster using someone elses personal information. At that point it is Sparks problem as their systems failed.

The fault is with the fraudster.

I can't comment on the specific case as I don't know the details, and it would be inappropriate for me to know the details however your argument there doesn't necessarily hold up to logic.

I'll use a completely different example.

Say some bad person socially engineered a lot of personal details out of someone, including secret information they would be required to keep secret, and then managed to use those personal details to let's say, make a transfer over phone banking and then withdraw the cash?

In the case where any business/bank/party was able to have all information and validation requirements met by a bad person portraying themselves as the legitimate first party, what culpability would there be on the bank/business/party in that case. (I am NOT saying that's what necessarily happened here, it's just an example)

So if a bad person stole, or was given enough personal and/or secret information to successfully pass the requirements to gain credit/good etc with a company, who's at fault?

Cheers - N

The problem I see with that is most businesses set the verification bar way too low. DOB, address are both easily gotten, as is the school they went to and probably all their names. That's all open source info.

The reason for using a passport or Drivers license is that both contain photo id. If they don't use the photo id to check the person signing a contract larger than $1000 (as the contract above is) then they have not done their job verifying the info given is not fraudulent (unless the tenant has an identical twin sister or dopplgeganger - in which case the lsit of suspects is very few.) You can scan passport info in a walk by. RFIDs make that rediculously easy. Ditto credit cards and other modern id stuff.

surfisup1000

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#2204124 24-Mar-2019 09:12

golfpunk111:

My Fiancee and her went into the Spark shop where they were told to call the call centre where they found that the account had been fraudulently set up as drivers license and passport details had been provided. They told them to email their fraud team and essentially the responsibility was on us to prove this was fraud.

One thing I don't get, is how a physical drivers license and passport could have been sighted. Unless they were fakes? But, in my experience, fakes are usually pretty easy to detect.

golfpunk111

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#2204141 24-Mar-2019 10:04

Had to have been fakes unless she was duped into supplying the numbers. It was an online application too.

We have requested all the account documentation that was used to set it up so will see when it comes through

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Aredwood

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#2204150 24-Mar-2019 10:35

Does the Anti Money Laundering laws apply to Spark? If so, then Spark have unlikely to have complied with them, due to not physically sighting the drivers license and passport.

Even if those laws dont apply to Spark, I feel that they should. Due to the risk of terrorists or other criminals obtaining cellphone connections in other people's names.

nunz

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#2204207 24-Mar-2019 12:47

Aredwood: Does the Anti Money Laundering laws apply to Spark? If so, then Spark have unlikely to have complied with them, due to not physically sighting the drivers license and passport.

Even if those laws dont apply to Spark, I feel that they should. Due to the risk of terrorists or other criminals obtaining cellphone connections in other people's names.

I suspect the transaction is lower than the threshold.

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