A German court ruled earlier this week that victims of phishing scams, and not banks, are responsible for money lost in online scams.
The German Federal Court of Justice in the town of Karlsruhe made the ruling on Tuesday, according to English language German newspaper The Local, which called the ruling a landmark judgment.
The case in question involved a retiree who lost approximately $6,600 after mistakenly entering his banking credentials on a fake bank website. Citing another German newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, The Hour claims the plaintiff entered ten TAN codes, transaction numbers used for German banks, into a site that resembled his bank, Sparda Bank. Three months later, the money was siphoned into a Greek account without his authorization.
While the plaintiff argued that the bank should have protected its customers from abusing the codes he entered, the judges upheld previous judgements by district and state courts and ruled the plaintiff’s own negligence was to blame.
Phishing has been on the rise in Germany, with counts spiking up 82 percent, to 5,300 reported incidents, in 2010.
For more on this, head to The Local.
