MFA-optional banks leave safe doors (and accounts) wide open for thieves to pillage
OPINION I write a weekly column called PWNED, about how poor security practices can lead to serious damage. Usually, there’s something funny in the malfeasance, like a CEO who kept every employee’s password in an Excel file on his desktop.
However, I wasn’t laughing back in May when professional thieves invaded my 84-year-old mother’s entire financial life and managed to make off with $30,000 from her bank accounts alone. And they wouldn’t have gotten in if her financial institutions required multi-factor authentication (aka MFA or 2FA), a step too many institutions won’t take.
One day in May, Mom got a call from the institution that runs her retirement savings account, who had identified a suspicious transaction and asked her if it was legit. She said no and they immediately protected her account.
Then she checked her bank account at a different institution to see if it was compromised and...
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