For a long time in Australia when you purchased property you had to visit the local Land Titles office or local equivalent to pay your stamp duty and get paperwork done. Recently several state governments decided to outsource this critical function to a private company, the Property Exchange Australia - PEXA. It was seen as a win-win with a private company taking over storing and maintaining land titles and the State Governments getting a kick back for it. Until it all went wrong recently when $250,000 was stolen from a PEXA conveyancer's account.
The victim of the hack was Dani Venn, who is well known for being on the local version of Masterchef. PEXA has claimed no responsibility for the loss and with the PEXA system soon to be made mandatory in NSW, Victoria and Western Australia, many people are concerned that the system is not secure and should not be used for title or money transfers. While the Commonwealth Bank was able to freeze and recover 138K of the funds, 110K is still missing leaving Ms Venn in the lurch. PEXA has claimed to be taking action to secure the service.
While PEXA has claimed that their online system will be of benefit to lawyers, sellers, buyers and real estate agents, the reality of moving data out of offline systems to internet based servers may very well have just created the sweetest honeypot ever seen online in Australia.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Thursday July 05 2018, @01:00PM (2 children)
Personally I never ever send large sums without sending a small sum first and verifying that it went to the right place, and then using the same details for the large transaction.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Thursday July 05 2018, @04:31PM
Yeah, that's what we did when we bought our house.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Thursday July 05 2018, @07:44PM
This is how most banks do wire transfers. Or at least how my bank did it when I was setting up an investment account.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh