The Anonymous Widower

The Peer-To-Peer Invisible Firewall

I still have some money on deposit with my bank, as I need it to pay builders and things like that, but I don’t think I will have it there for much longer.

This morning, I got a load of messages trying to target my non-existent NatWest account. As I have never had a message targeting any of my peer-to-peer lending accounts, it would seem logical that any fraudster will more likely get my bank account details than say those of the peer-to-peer lenders.

But suppose they did break into my peer-to-peer accounts, they could only transfer money back to my main bank account, which was used to load the money to the accounts. So I doubt it would do them any good.

So to get any of my money out of the peer-to-peer sites, they’d probably need to take complete control of the site and replace the software with their own.

With my software hat on, I would propose that that is virtually impossible.

So in my view in addition to the obvious security on peer-to-peer sites, there is an additional invisible firewall, due to the design of the sites.

This would make them a very unlikely target for a sophisticated criminal. They would find it easier to set up a completely bogus site and get punters to deposit money with them, for onward transmission out of the country. Hopefully, that would be spotted, given the high-profile nature of sites like Zopa, Funding Circle and Ratesetter, who have been through the mill on credibility with the media, regulators and politicians.

They can’t all be wrong!

August 29, 2013 - Posted by AnonW | Computing, Finance, World | Banks, Peer-to-Peer Lending, Software