You only need to do this once and you get jammed. Originally I was told that if you change your wire instructions more than once a month, you get flagged, but now if you make ANY changes to your account (add Mr to your name as an outrageous example) you get flagged and have to confirm thru their banking department. I thought the whole purpose of doing everything electronically and thru email confirms was to reduce the need to contact customer service and keep our costs low!
ok. Thanks a lot for your detailed explanation. I just hope that IB will try to do their best to optimize all these back office security checks asap. After all we live in a fast world - and the fact that things could be "interactive" with IB is actually enormously valuable (at least to me). regards, dhpar
The "blunt hammer" approach is standard IB business philosophy... Meaning the Customer is not relevant. As a software engineer... My professional opinion is that IB's security follies over the last 2 years... Are beyond JOKE. I'm happy that IB is ** finally ** checking LARGE WIRE TRANSFERS to foreign countries via human contact... Because, frankly, NOT doing so would certainly contravene a slew of NASD regulations... And probably many Federal And State laws as well. >> "have inadvertently compromised their basic password security" This statement says more than it seems... Because IN NO SITUATION... Is it possible to determine ** with any certainty ** how "security was compromised". Even though IB has > 500 mostly disgruntled employees... And does business extensively with corrupt entities in Russia and Asia... IB's view is that the Customer is ALWAYS the security problem. Now I finally feel safe... Because a Registered Person must authorize my wire transfers... Instead of a some software coded by a revolving door of over-worked programmers.
better safe than sorry. If one account was bilked, I am sure the thread content would be reversed: e.g. -- WTF IB, where is your security measure ? -- IB useless against heckers -- IB I want my money back !!!
I agree with this approach when it comes to withdrawing money. But why do we have to call for other changes? I would also have less of a problem if I didn't have to wait on hold for 20 minutes. Like I have nothing to do all day.
Well, this is just another customer complaint among many which again shows how IB is an inferior Broker. Thanks to honest Traders who are willing to speak the truth: jose.montana; dhpar; deviltrader; cstfx; QuantPlus; newbunch. New Traders: be very careful about putting your $ with IB: cheap commissions = cheap charts, cheap execution platform, very poor customer service, etc., etc., etc. Watch out for shills of IB who regularly pipe up in defense of incompetence, unreliability, and poor customer service. All we hear from IB over an over again are excuses as to why things are not working; and this time is no different. Geeez, when, if ever, will IB get its' act together? I hope these comments from honest traders like those mentioned above helps NEWTimers just starting out pursing their trading careers. Tom
But we all still use IB. IB is frustrating at times and I hope they shape up. If I ever find a better broker, I will switch. But I can't find anybody better and I am still quite happy IB. They have never messed up anything with my account. I've never had the system go down when I needed to trade. Never had slow executions. Never lost money because of an IB mistake. My only complaint is the amount of time I have to spend adjusting to their changes (API programming). Up until now, I have rarely had to use their customer service. But now they forced me to a few times and I wasn't satisfied. They should fix customer service. But even better, don't make me call them.
I am glad IB takes changing my account personal information serious (e-mail address, mailing address, bank information and such) as those changes are what a crook is going to do before transferring my money out of my account. None of my other brokers go to this extra effort or offer a security token and that is what concerns me.
Actually its good that some security is implement, but i think they are exaggerating a little bit and here is why: I mean it because if one (like me) have the Security token on his hands that should be enough as proof that its me the one changing something on a profile (like the phone number or something like that). In order to change this you should know your user / pass , have the security token on your power and also have your email to confirm with the token the system gave you, so, after all this security "steps" you also have to call (an spent between 5 to 20 minutes of your life to do such stopud procedure) to tell a representative of IB security stuff about your account (like pet's name, citizenship and stuff like that). After all, why should i trust that info to a stupid "low range" IB employee who is picking up the phone just like that. Isn't this less safe that all the "automatic" process (with 3 security steps) that i talked about before. How can we be so sure this employee wouldn't be fired in the future knowing all my security data that i provide over the phone. Even so, phone conversations are way too unsafe, if we compare to the "token device + email + login" thing. My point is that: One (phone checking) or the other (automatic process with the STP) should be implement, but the two? c'mon give us a break