The UK’s largest banks were compared to ‘communist China’ after it emerged their privacy policies permit them to monitor customers’ social media.
The four biggest high street lenders, NatWest, Lloyds Banking Group, HSBC and Barclays have all declined to deny that they keep track of users’ activity.
The disclosure came days after leading Brexiteer Nigel Farage revealed an internal dossier from Coutts, in which staff justified his account closure by claiming his views ‘do not align’ with the bank’s values.
In a 13-page privacy notice, Coutts’ parent company NatWest says it may gather ‘information that you make public on social media’.
A newspaper outlet reported that Lloyds, which also owns Halifax and Bank of Scotland, can also collect any data from ‘published media and social networks.
HSBC’s privacy notice is able to monitor information ‘that relates to your social interactions, such as your communications via social media, between individuals, organisations, prospects’, while Barclays reveals it can ‘collect information about you, such as from your activities on their social media pages or through the social media’.
Other major lenders, including Nationwide, Santander and Virgin Money, have also said they may check social media in special circumstances or ‘certain situations’.
Metro Bank, which Reform UK leader Richard Tice has accused of closing down his account due to his pro-Brexit views, said it will ‘occasionally obtain information from publicly available sources, such as social media sites.
Nigel Farage said of the findings that he doesn’t want to live in communist China yet increasingly we are. He said that the banks were out of control and need to be brought to heel and that people would be horrified by this.
Tory former minister Gareth Johnson added that this smacks of a big brother approach from the banks, and that he couldn’t see what anybody’s social media activities had to do with their banks.
He said that too often the banking sector seems to have lost its way recently which should worry us all.
Sadly, social media is the rot of humanity, and this is an invasion of our privacy and a bank that spies on us should have their banking licences withdrawn.
Our Government should ban this activity because what we do in our life has nothing to do with them and it’s an invasion of our privacy.
Makes you wonder when the energy companies will also start using the same criteria – this is an extremely worrying escalation indeed.
The simple solution would be to eschew any connection with social media, full stop.
We are being transformed into a totalitarian society. They want to abolish our Freedom of Speech and monitor our use of the open internet, and without actually knowing it we have no human rights.
Banks are now overreaching and have the upper hand and they have an attitude to go with it. It used to be that the customer was always right, even if they were wrong, now the customer is wrong even if they’re right.
And why do banks want to know what you do? Surely, they just want your money! The reason is, data is sold, and it’s an extremely lucrative business selling your data. Individually it doesn’t have a tremendous value, but multiplied by the number of customers, it amounts to serious money.
Some might say that if we’re foolish enough to mouth off on social media then that’s our problem, but it’s called Freedom of Speech and good men fought and died for that right, and as long as your breaking no law what you say is none of their business.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 