Caution - GMO Bank Aozora - Security Concerns

[sammyuk]

Hello everyone,

It's my first time posting here and unfortunately it's not through the best of situations! Recently, over the course of 72 hours, 308 fraudulent transactions took place from my GMO personal bank account. The fraudsters were able to completely clear my bank account of 870,000 yen and no action was taken by the bank with no red flags raised. All transactions came through apple.com/bill.

Now, whilst the bank does send email notifications for direct debits, I admittedly had those turned off as they clutter my email account for banking. So I could say that's my own fault. However, I didn't actually check my bank email account within those 72 hours due to work and life! I also don't keep my banking emails on my phone.

So far, GMO hasn't taken any responsibility and the lack of humanity and empathy in any of the emails is just incredible. I'm originally from the UK and generally they will catch fraudulent transactions very quickly and put a freeze on your account - so much so it's often frustrating!

GMO failed to call me, failed to send an email of possible fraudulent activity, and didn't freeze the account despite hundreds of transactions. Is this normal practice in Japan in that all security should be up to the customer and constantly tracking their bank account? I try to take good care of my mental health, so I often turn notifications off on my phone at least...I just don't think it's realistic for the customer to constantly check everyday.

Anyway, that's the situation and I thought I'd let this to be a warning to everyone. It may take up to 8 months for the chargeback process to happen. Apple are only refunding some of the transactions for reasons unknown (this would be the quickest route). The rest is up to GMO. Needless to say they'll be losing by business.

Currently I'm looking into banks that have English assistance services and better apps / UX design. I know that's a tall ask in Japan but so far I'm looking into...

Sony Bank - For Personal Banking needs
Resona - For use as my business account (I'm a freelancer, I assume it's OK to receive client payments to a personal account).

Resona's app looks particularly good and even if their security doesn't employ automatic measures like the UK, at least the ease of use should be better.

Please feel free to call me out and say this is my own fault...but honestly, I really do think the service should be better.

Cheers,
Sam

[RetireJapan]

Welcome. What a nightmare!

I have generally had the opposite problem: Japanese banks and credit cards being too sensitive and freezing accounts after non-suspicious transactions (often more than once). But that would probably be better than being 870,000 yen out of pocket!

Hope you can get it cleared up.

[Wales4rugbyWC23]

Dear Sam,

I had exactly the same thing happen to me with 'Apple.com' The hacker took 10,000 yen daily out of my account. It happened to me 22 times. The only thing I pay for Apple is cloud storage, which is about 400 yen a month. Fortunately, I paid for all these through my Japanese credit card, who were very good and refunded me everything. Apple refused to pay anything, so you are doing quite well getting something off them. Cancelling my credit card was a bit of a pain since I do all my utilities, insurances and taxes through my credit card.

I have got to give credit to JAL credit card they were brilliant, and to be honest it was pretty rotten Apple service- pardon the pun.

[sammyuk]

Thanks for the responses guys! It seems like this apple thing isn't so uncommon. From what I could ascertain from hours and hours of phones, different 'senior advisors' who kept no notes from call to call, the only reason they refunded some of the items so far is because they took place in apple stores outside of Japan. The bulk of the transactions took place within Japan and since (according to them) I may know the person in Japan who made these transactions, they cannot refund them. This is despite them all being within a similar time frame, exactly the same type of transactions and unrelated to my own personal apple account. Laughable.

I wish I had a credit card here but as of yet, have been unable to successfully obtain one! That would make it easier for sure. Perhaps I'll try again now I'm a few years in.

I have GMO personal and business. I've emptied out both now for security and once the refund has hopefully been processed I'll be shutting down both accounts. Honestly I cannot believe they simply let hundreds of transactions go unnoticed that were so outside of my usual spending habits. No empathy, no urgency, absolutely laughable customer service!

So yeah, bit of a nightmare week. I'm quite happy my classic JP Post Account has zero modern features - no online banking, no debit card (I didn't apply), so any excess cash not invested in NISA I will now store in there.

I'm planning to go with Sony Bank and Resona from now on. At least Resona looks like it has a decent app with English, and Sony Bank even has English customer service. The journey continues!

[Wales4rugbyWC23]

I can't remember if it was Apple or my credit card, but they told me that all the fraud was done within Japan.

I was fuming with Apple- rotten to the core, you couldn't call them back, they only called you, always put through to a different person.

The thing is with your I-phone you are pretty dependent on having cloud storage. I wanted to delete it all after my experience with them.

[Nancy]

So sorry this happened. I hope that you get your money back. I am paying for Apple icloud storage with a gift card. You can easily add money by buying a new gift card at Family Mart when the amount gets low.

[gaijin86]

Sorry to hear of the scam

I was just wondering, do you have any idea how they got your login details? Was there a pwd or a 2factor code involved?

[sammyuk]

To be honest I have no idea how they got the details. I use the card on Amazon JP, my local supermarket, perhaps my local cafe and also bought a journal from an online store, 'intelligent change.' I think that was all powered by Shopify so everything should have been secure. I'll just never know.

Looking back though it seems like something strange called Chat.Versailles tried to something for 5 euros - then there was a one time password request the evening before it all started.

I'm kicking myself now for not checking my emails but I was so busy with work, I just didn't look. I have a separate email for personal admin so I tend to only check once or twice a week.

Anyway, I'll have hopefully the final call with Apple tomorrow to see how the pending cases were doing. After that, it's over to GMO to handle the chargeback process and I'm just nervous whether they'll do it or not.

I've withdrawn all money out of my GMO personal and business account now and have applied for Resona Bank instead. My cash is now in JP post bank so that should be safe since there's literally no internet banking or debit card, just a simple cash book and cash card!

It's all been so damn stressful, Apple were infuriating. GMO were infuriating. No humanity, empathy or urgency whatsoever...

[TokyoWart]

Very sorry that you are in this situation. I do want to thank you for sharing the details of what happened because this is making me reconsider how I should be protecting my accounts and whether I should ever use Apple's payment services.

[Deep Blue]

Is Apple the weak link in the breach or is Apple simply the merchant through which the scammers are draining the accounts? Presumably gift cards are easy to convert to cash....