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No cybersecurity is perfect; accounts can be hacked at any time. If I find that a hacker has stolen the money in my bank or broker account, does the financial institution cover that; or is it my loss, as suggested by this article?

The answer may differ by jurisdictions, in which case, I would like to know the answer for various sample jurisdictions.

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    This question is highly dependent on jurisdiction and its regulator.
    – base64
    Commented Sep 3, 2020 at 10:46
  • Thank you. I reflected that in my question.
    – Joshua Fox
    Commented Sep 3, 2020 at 12:05

1 Answer 1

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It Depends.

In the scope of personal accounts your chances of getting your money back are rather high, especially if you fulfill the following points.

  • The breach was not caused by gross neglect on your part. (such as giving TAN´s or account details to strangers)

  • You report the breach timely.

If fraud transactions are discovered in time, often banks are able to reverse them. If not they may still be better off reimbursing you to save the image of online accounts. Banks save heaps of money by moving transactions online, so they would not want customers to lose faith in that. If there was a security flaw on the Banks side, they may also be liable.

Expect some trouble and unavailability of your funds till you get there, though! This can be several weeks where you have to depend on emergency money from somewhere else.

In your Link we are talking about the complex funds of a big organisation with multiple employees where seemingly it took months for them to even discover the missing funds. The article also states that there may be (cyber security) insurance to cover the loss.

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  • The answer fits in with your question as bounded by "cybertheft". Do not apply the answer to circumstances like identify theft, where it is assumed you made the transaction, where you are forced into the position of proving it was not you that conducted the transaction. Commented Sep 3, 2020 at 19:04

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