Wyld Stallyns Rule!

If a data entry employee of Lloyds TSB doesn’t like your telephone banking password, they have the power to change or adapt that password without customer consent. That’s the message Lloyds TSB were culpable of sending out yesterday.

Steve Jetley, a previously anonymous individual from a Welsh border town, felt aggrieved at Lloyds TSB for the perceived miss-selling of an insurance policy. In a slightly juvenile move, but one that presumably made him feel like the big man, he changed his Lloyds TSB telephone banking password to:

“Lloyds is Pants”

Upon realising his password had been changed, our man Jetley called the customer services arm of Lloyds TSB, only to be informed his password had been altered, without his consent, to:

“No it’s not”

Naturally, this begs a plethora of questions. Firstly, do low-level Lloyds TSB employees love the company so much that they’re prepared to risk their jobs to uphold the bank’s “untarnished” reputation? Secondly, does that mean passwords are stored simply in plain text? And finally, do they really think Jetley is just going to take this lying down?

Well, if they did then they had another thing coming, when Jetley (in true Jetley style) insisted that he now wanted his password changed to:

“Barclays is Better”

What a card that Steve Jetley is. If it was me, I’d have been taking this security breach a little more seriously.

The upshot? A full apology from bank to Jetley, and Lloyds TSB having to concede the worker in question has now “left” the bank.

A happy ending, but take heed from this tale dear consumers.