Thieves raid online accounts in penny stock scam

[Soaker]

Interesting article in this morning's San Francisco Chronicle about customers of several online brokerages having their accounts hacked into and having their holdings replaced with penny stocks. One of the victims was a Vanguard customer.

Link: Kathleen Pender's article in today's Chronicle.

One point this article reinforces: Don't ever log into your account at a public computer terminal.

Eric

[cfs]

Thanks for the link, Eric. Good article and good advice about computers in public places. Another good thing to do is NOT to save passwords in YOUR computer. Come up with a password that makes sense only to YOU, and I go as far as changing passwords on a MONTHLY basis. Thanks again.

cfs

[CyberBob]

This is interesting. If you are stupid, you may have to pay the consequences.

Would Vanguard reimburse a customer for online theft if the customer didn't have up-to-date security software installed?

I don't think it's appropriate to give a blanket 'yes' or 'no' answer on a hypothetical situation. We always treat each client issue on a case-by-case basis, which includes a thorough investigation to determine the cause of the fraud. ... We do believe that investors have to take some personal responsibility when it comes to protecting their account information, and we make it clear in many places on our site just how important that is. But we still look at each case separately before making a determination about reimbursement."

[AshKK]

If you are stupid, you may have to pay the consequences.

This makes sense. But this is sort of thing that "Fidelity Fraud Protection" vs "Vanguard Fraud Protection" debates argued about. I think Fidelity is more subtle about excluding this, while Vanguard is more open.