Quote from: makomk on July 29, 2011, 09:15:51 AM

Now suppose Mallory manages to get her hands on Alice's online banking credentials (either by phishing or by actively installing malicious software on Alice's computer) and sends Alice's money to a little company called Mt Gox without authorisation, then exchanges it for easily-laundered Bitcoins. This isn't an entirely hypothetical scenario; it's one of the reasons that Mt Gox's EU bank account was cancelled and they've been having problems accepting SEPA transfers.

Edit: If German bank transactions really are non-reversible that partly explains why there was such pressure to kick Mt Gox out, though their bank was in France and there are some interesting interactions with SEPA rules in that case. I suspect there's something important we're missing though.

It actually is a European regulation, so I suppose all SEPA-participating countries have these rules now. You are now responsible for making sure the transfer is OK, they won't compare recipient's names as they did before and they won't .
However, in case of phishing, banks are to reimburse their customers. I don't know how far this goes, but banks here will usually happily do that, because it's worse that their customers would lose trust in online banking.

I think the high percentage of fraud could have been the reason for CIC to kick Mt. Gox out, they just didn't want to cover anymore for these huge amounts of fraudulent transactions. However, as has been said before, the Mount should have had multiple accounts in Europe in the first place. It could also be that they just suspected a huge money laundering operation with all the cash coming in and going out to different people and a lack of understanding about Bitcoins and Bitcoin exchanges on the bank's part.

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