There's a hole in the bucket!

Have you checked your bank accounts lately? I logged on to our bank over the weekend to check ours. Not an uncommon task. Usually everything's fine. But this time …

After I pulled my heart from my mouth, reconnected my jaw and blinked 27 times they were still there: not one, not two, but fourteen transactions for which I could find no reasonable explanation.

Had we tripped half-way round the world during our dreams last Tuesday, splurged thousands of dollars in London, then arrived back in the Cove a few hours later? Even we might have noticed that.

Obviously somehow, someone, somewhere, had managed to get hold of my card details and decided use them for a rapid spending spree. Thank goodness our bank's security team thought transactions 15 and 16 were suspicious and put a block on the account!

We are assured by the bank that everything should turn out okay. I still have the original (now blocked) card. So we should get our money back. There is the inconvenience of course. I need a new card. There will be forms to fill out. But there's a small chance that the culprits may be caught.

Probably a business that I have dealt with on-line has had its computer systems hacked. Many companies seem lackadaisical when it comes to protecting their clients' data - even some of those companies who spend megabucks chasing possible copyright breaches.

Australia first plugged into the Internet just over a quarter of a century ago. In that time it has transformed the way we live; the way we do business. It brings both the good and bad of the world to our living room.

Incidents like the one I have just experienced do not mean we should give up on the benefits that the Internet provides but they do mean we need to be vigilant. So ...

Have you checked your bank accounts lately?