I just had a long discussion with a top level computer programmer. Her bottom line view is that the banking computer system is very fragile.
She said that because of all the mergers, the systems just barely talk to one another. She said that despite the fact that she does most of her banking online, she still has a paper copy of all her transactions sent to her by mail. She advises that everyone should do so, even if the bank charges for such paper back up. If your banks system goes down, you may need the paper back up. She calls a major crash, "the loss of organizational memory."
Your paper records could be the only thing that could protect you in such a situation.
She points out that the youth are the most negligent about getting receipts. They make deposits at ATMs and don't keep the receipts and don't keep receipts from purchases, which they should.
She hinted, but did not come right out and say, that it seems that bank errors tend to be to the advantage of the bank and thus there may be some institutional bias by banks to not solve customer problems in software with the same urgency that they solve software problems that hurt the bank. (I got the distinct impression that she knows more than she told me on this last point.)
Bottom line: Keep paper records of financial transactions. If a bank system crashes, your statement may be the only proof you have of what is in your account.
While I agree with the paper statement or at least printing a copy off the banks web site, its way over the top to imply not doing so would mean that your money could be lost forever if your bank's software crashes. While the bank's software may crash, that does not mean your data would be lost. There are so many layers of redundancy and continuity plans that it would take global nuclear war to destroy all sources of the data. Even then that may not be enough. I also beleive that account balances are loaded and maintained at the Fed's clearing house which is how ATM transactions are able to know if you have enough money or not to make a withdrawal.
ReplyDelete" I also beleive that account balances are loaded and maintained at the Fed's clearing house..."
ReplyDeleteHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!!
Thanks for the laugh of the night! If you think that the FED is trustworthy enough to retain and access data on every transaction, every day, then you MUST be new here.
The FED can barely find its own ass with a thousand hands, and even then they would disagree about what part they were grabbing.
"Systems barely talking to one another" is a hallmark of excellent systems design. Tightly coupled systems are infinitely more fragile and less fault tolerant than decoupled, loosely integrated systems.
ReplyDeleteThe woman you spoke too does not sound very "top level" to say the least.
this is seriously shitty advice.all banks have backups of their data on a multiple location basis and taken multiple times a day.this is not the 1970s
ReplyDeleteI am a computer consultant that has worked on bank programs. It is far from "shitty advice" to keep paper copies of your bank transactions.
ReplyDeleteThe point is not that the banks don't have redundanies for their sysytems. The point is that when bank acquistions are made two different sysytems are put together where all the intricacies of the two systems may not be understood and it is not known what quirk could result in a major part of a sysytem going down.
There is no such thing as 100% protection of a major computer system any more than laptops being 100% protected against crshes.
Power grids have all kinds of redundancies built in and yet we still have blackouts. The same thing could happen, under the right conditions, with a bank computer.
So download your statements in PDF and save them on your computer. Then secure the statements using TruCrypt. Copy your encrypted statement to your cloud. Now you have redundant, secure data.
ReplyDeleteThat is pure drivel...Only if there were a complete and total nuclear annihilation including offsite facilities like Iron mountain would that be remotely true and I highly doubt that your bank account would be what you would be concerned about. I worked in banks in computers for many years and I can tell you that is fear mongering. While it is true that there are some interoperabilty issues as a result of mergers etc, all institutions have a back up plan. The worst case scenario is that your account would be restored to a few hours before the crash and even with a crash there are redundant audit trails from which things could be rebuilt. The worst case scenario would be that you may not have access to your funds for a short period as things are straightened out. Your source is paranoid and either purposely sensationalist or naive.
ReplyDeleteI know firsthand that financial data storage is redundant and recoverable. For your own sanity you should keep offline records for anything financial (if you like keeping score). That is an insurance policy against "lost records" and can provide an audit trail for legal purposes. I trust machines but humans are a different story. Use your computer and printer to protect yourself first. I think this makes the most sense.
ReplyDeleteBank systems are some of the oldest programs in existence. They were written when there was little analysis & almost no design. They were written by clerical people who understood their own paper procedures & then passed an IBM aptitude test. These are programs that are too big to replace & the original authors have all retired.
ReplyDeleteDO EVERYTHING BY PAPER WITH BANK TELLERS.
I don't even know any women programmers and I have been in this business a long time
ReplyDeleteinstead of collecting pale of useless paper wouldn't it better to take the most of your money out off bank? During bank holiday you will be needed some cash anyway
ReplyDeleteStoring PDF copies only makes sense if you download them to a secure thumbdrive. This is especially true if we experience an EMP or CME that crashes the electrical grid for a long time....although if that happens, most people will starve to death anyway. But for those of us that are actually prepared for such an event, it would be nice to have a record of your assets should the grid come back online eventually.
ReplyDeleteSo how are you securing your ThumbDrive from EMP? Perhaps consider writing to optical media, such as a CD or DVD.
ReplyDeleteSo my first statement is; Sorry to hear she was laid off. No, they don't lay off the best people, like she thinks in her mind. You have no idea the amount of time and $$ that go into disaster recovery systems and testing. At least at larger banks. I am an SA for a major bank and we do DR testing regularly. We could take a Nuke hit at our production site @ 8am, and I would have systems back online in our DR site 1000's of miles away without any data loss in time for me to take lunch!
ReplyDeleteSecure your ThumbDrive from EMP (or anything else, for that matter) using a Faraday cage. Just surround it with a conductive barrier (wrap it in aluminum foil). EMP won't get in for the same reason why signals don't get in or out of the side of a coaxial cable.
ReplyDelete