An ING Australia customer was able to access the account information including bank balances for at least two other customers through his internet banking login, due to an issue with the company’s online banking site.
Northern Territory resident Nick Oliver told Guardian Australia he was logged into his ING account and was attempting to do a transfer on Thursday night when he noticed a “complete stranger’s” account details popped up on his screen.
Their name wasn’t included but it showed their BSB number, the account number and account balances. He then saw a second customer’s account details splash up on the screen.
“That freaked me out of it. So I logged out and I logged back into mine. And nothing else weird has happened since then, but it was just this couple of minutes of being totally in someone else’s internet banking,” he said.
He reported the issue to ING, who told him it should be impossible, but once he provided evidence, they said they would investigate and locked his internet banking account in the meantime.
A spokesperson for ING Australia said the issue had been identified and fixed.
“This is related to an issue that was identified and resolved overnight,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson did not provide any details on what caused the issue or how long it had been a problem, and at the time of publication had not responded to questions on how many customers were affected, or whether the potential privacy breach had been reported to the privacy commissioner.
The bank posted on social media that its online banking service went offline overnight between 11.30pm and close to 7am due to an “unexpected outage”.
Oliver said the whole experience left him feeling uneasy.
“I could see these complete strangers’ details and I shouldn’t be able to see this … this is wrong, why is this on my screen?” he said.
“It did make me concerned that if I can see other people’s details when I shouldn’t be able to, then who can see mine and how many people can see random people’s details? It was a concern.”
