Bank of America has a PR problem right now; there has been a stream of unrelated public data exposures in which BoA was right in the center. For example, the incident where the financial records of those 100,000 people were stolen or any of the numerous other public theft incidents in the press recently. To see evidence of the "world of hurt" they are in, just do a google search for "bank of america" and "fraud" or "theft." In current news, I get over 700 hits (just current news mind you.) Meaning, there are over 700 news articles currently discussing BoA's security problems. Painful.
Obviously, some serious PR needs to be done and quickly; as such, BoA apparently seems to have decided to break the cardinal rule of FS Internet activity: namely, "thou shalt not distribute software to the customer." Over time, most banks/brokerage have found the experience of distributing software to clients to lead to astronomical costs in terms of help-desk activity. Well, BoA has decided to forge ahead with anti-phishing software distribution to clients. They are going to lose their shirts on this, but I guess they already know that. Everybody and their brother is going to be calling the helpdesk with "now Word doesn't load" to "my digital camera doesn't work after I installed your software."
This software distribution thing is mostly PR if you ask me; BoA is probably losing enough business and getting enough heat from its customers that it is willing to ante up the ridiculous expense to get some people off its proverbial back. Just some of the complainants will be appeased by this; not all of them. The problem is that they've already inherited the bad rep; I prophesy that they will continue to lose business (millions) and continue to be the FS insecurity whipping boy and that there is nothing they can do about it. The bad press is already at critical mass - customers are leaving rather than coming - the articles have already been printed. It will be years before they can recover. All in all, I'm glad I'm not Bank of America right now.
Posted by Ed at June 3, 2005 10:08 AM