I had transfered my account to IB from the one I had been primarily trading from for the past eight months(I had always kept a few grand in the IB account just in case). IB was going to serve only as a temporary stop over as I was actually looking to move somewhere else. I had tried to set up the wire transfer instructions a few weeks back in anticipation of the move from IB to another, however it never went through(not the wire transfer, but only the instructions for my bank). In fact, I realized that I wasn't receiving any email from IB at all. Quite stupidly, I procrastinated about calling, but this afternoon as I was preparing the paper work for the new firm, I decided I had better take care of the situation. So this afternoon, I called and explained the situation and got a reply that I had tried to send a previous wire transfer before, last July. Last July? I was thinking whether I had or not. HMMMMM, "what bank was the instructions to?" "ANZ New Zealand", was the reply. I'm like, "What The Fuck!!!!!! There is no way in hell I would try to wire money to New Zealand.". What is really odd is that I had continued to receive emails for a time over the summer and I think they only stopped about a month ago. I just checked my email and the interactive brokers domain was blocked(maybe it sends emails that are blocked to the spam folder, which I don't check, rather than just deleting them?). The reason that this thief wasn't successfull is because their wasn't sufficient funds. I had made a trade the day the transfer would go through, otherwise the account didn't typically have a lot of activity. And this was no mistake, the amount was for what the account was worth on that day. I'm wondering how this person could have set up this wire transfer without me knowing it. Conceivably, he could have gone through the process checked my email for the confirmation token and then quickly deleted it with out me knowing it. But wouldn't IB send an email saying the transfer didn't go through? I don't remember one. Anyways, I'm lucky it occured before I transfered my main account. The IB CS rep was very nonchalant about the whole thing. I called the FBI. They only investigate cases over 100,00k. Can't say I really blame them as it wasn't much money and they weren't successfull in stealing it. At the very least, I figure I would inform the supposed brokerage frim that the wire attempting to go to. It was going through JP Morgan to ANZ New Zealand on behalf of a firm called Biddley Inc, which is supposed to be a brokerage firm. I can't find this firm through searching the net. So, I'm hoping one of our NZ members here has heard of it. I'll send an email to the NZ securities board and see if they know it. I remember this happened to somebody on this board about a year and a half ago. I wonder how many others had this happen that we don't hear about? Perhaps IB does deserve some of the bashing it gets.
The fact somebody could find out my account log in and set up a transfer to another country so easily.
Contact the ANZ Bank in New Zealand directly. They have a dedicated fraud investigation department for investigating these types of things. There is a possibility you may not be the only one so they will take it very seriously. And ensure the offender is prosecuted if they are committing a crime. Also, consider if your email and personal computer security have been compromised. Do you have a firewall etc. It's possible that someone is accessing every word and keystroke you type on your computer. Runningbear
Are you going to finish this sentence? Let me venture a guess: Your e-mail password is the same as your IB password, and you did not change either for a period of several months. Alternatively, you could have kay logging spyware running on one of your computers, which will send all your passwords to the attacker, no matter into what application or web page you enter them.
IF someone rips your cash out of your account at IB who's fault would it be? I thought IB had upped it's security. Now I wonder if they have or not. I know they changed the way they used to send your account info through email like it was everybody's business. Now you have a choice whether you want the world to see your account info. Nice... Now they have a loophole and can blame it on you... (they must of gotten your account info from your email that WE sent you),,, by mistake... sorry... since it is under 100K the FBI or us or nobody will help you get your money back... too bad... and we do not confirm wire transfers.... we just send them out all over the planet because, ah we get paid to do it.. We will never know how many times someone has tried to rip $$$ from IB because they will never tell us... If they did, everyone would probably close their account ASAP. If thier servers go down, why cannot their security measures also fail 2 or 3 times a week? This is really scary...
who cares what his passwords are, one thing he said is that the IB c/s rep was nonchalant about it, would you or anyone else want to speak to a rep who didn't give a shit if you acct. was being hacked into? people are going to be able to hack into websites no matter what your passwords are. I'd be pissed off that no one at IB didn't seem to care.
A disappointing thing about that case was that the guy never came back and told us what, in the end, he learned from the whole thing - i.e. how his account security was compromised. We only got some brief comment from IB like 'his PC was physically compromised.' A cynic might speculate that somebody made him whole in exchange for a promise of confidentiality? You are not going to do that to us, are you Trajan? Hmmm, time to change some passwords ...
Damn. You have a good point here! But shouldn't IB have some kind of security measure that would stop any ol' turd that could use your info and take your $$$ out of your account and send it anywhere in the world where you don't even have a bank account? I would think so... IF they don't, they are in big doo doo in the long run...
You need to be better aware of what an interruption of your email from IB could imply. Now you know. You should be running a firewall app and see if info is being sent out of your computer without you knowing it.