German Court Rules: Clients are responsible for phishing losses

It would appear that German courts have little rational tolerance for various sorts of internet stupidity as of late, recently judgment that YouTube is responsible for its users when they upload copyrighted songs and now a German Federal court has just ruled that a victim of a phishing scam is responsible for being phished.

The recent case engage a retiree losing roughly $6,600 after giving up his bank data to a bogus site that looked the same as the genuine site of his bank, which ended up illicitly wiring the funds to Greece, who incidentally can use all the transfer it can get. Still, Germany’s highest civil court has decided that the retiree was the one who was neglectful, as Sparda Bank had sent its clients multiple warnings about phishing. Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office registered 5,000 reports of phishing in 2010, and a huge jump from 2009.

Still, the retiree takes the time to give 10 TAN codes (transaction numbers) into the fake site. The TAN codes are usually used in that country to validate the accuracy of online transactions. The codes can then be printed, texted or looked up on a Smartphone. Sparda Bank’s security also noted that being incited to give multiple TAN codes is a typical sign of phishing.

According to the Local, The applicant argue that the bank had a duty to guard its customers from the misuse of these codes – But the court upheld previous judgements by the district and state courts, approving with the bank’s argument that the client should abide responsibility for falling for the cheat.