RetireJapan

Could this happen in Japan?

"A thief will obtain enough of your personal information to open a new E*Trade brokerage account, and then they will request an ACAT transfer of the entire contents of your existing brokerage account (ex. Fidelity) to that new fake E*Trade account which they control. At this point, they can quickly liquidate the account and send the money elsewhere. The key here is that they just need to be able to open an empty, new brokerage account in your name plus find your Fidelity account numbers from a statement. They don’t need your Fidelity username and password (or pass two-factor authentication)."
https://www.mymoneyblog.com/fidelity-mo ... scams.html

The case above, if relevant to Japan, would be more of a threat than this less sophisticated one in which criminals got hold of passwords that had been used for multiple websites.
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13736092

They would need to successfully upload your My Number card and zairyu card, so no chance

I assumed that was the case, as that is the requirement for opening an account, but I have never tried to transfer my account and wasn't sure.

Makes me appreciate the MyNumber Card system and feel less irritated about the multiple card requests and the wait for login details in the snail mail.

Mind you the criminals in the Asahi article I linked to must have used fake IDs in the customers names to create fake bank accounts and siphon off their brokerage funds. And I think one of my brokerages only asked for the zairyu card later.

Anyway, it sounds like the criminals would face more hurdles here than in the Fidelity case.

Just wait until that would-be thief finds out how difficult Rakuten makes transfers based on the vagaries of how they handle foreign names.

Yes, suddenly the middle name feels like a nice security feature. At least, I will try telling myself that going forward