HSBC website mistake guides customers to porn

HSBC’s Hong Kong website has featured an out-of-date link that directed users to a porn site.

The mistake, the second embarrassing website failure for the bank in a week, happened because a link to an awards site that had been ended had not been removed. The link had since been taken over by a porn site.

HSBC apologised for the mistake and said in a statement that “a link to an external third-party website has been removed” from its community projects webpage.

“HSBC is not in any way associated with the external third-party website,” it said. “HSBC would like to apologise to the public for any inconvenience caused.”

The incident followed news last week that HSBC had inadvertently made information about customer mortgage accounts accessible via the internet.

The bank informed customers in the US that their mortgage account information had been accessible since the end of last year.

It discovered at the end of March this year that 685 mortgage customers in New Hampshire in the US were affected. The bank said it believes the information was made accessible online towards the end of 2014.

HSBC UK told Computer Weekly: “This matter only affects some mortgage customers of HSBC Finance Corporation in the US.

“HSBC takes this very seriously and deeply regrets that this incident occurred. We are conducting a thorough review of the potentially affected records and have implemented additional security measures designed to prevent a reoccurrence of such an incident.”

As more and more people choose to bank online and vial mobile phones, banks are under pressure to make services as convenient as possible while ensuring websites and apps are highly secure.

Research by banking software maker Fiserv found that mobile apps currently account for £1.7bn moved every week in the UK and online banking accounts for £6.4bn. However, this combined total of £8.1bn will increase to £12.8bn by 2020 as mobile transfers double to £3.4bn and online banking reaches £9.4bn.