KCB’s Twitter Account Goes Beyond Privacy to Expose a Customer’s Account Balance

Banking services are encouraging users to use online services for many reasons: it makes them reach their customers easily, and those channels are leveraged to net in more revenues. If you are a keen follower of the lenders’ financials, then you are probably aware that they make a killing from digital services, and most of their offerings are available to customers who are willing to take advantage of Kenya’s mobile and internet penetration that effectively make taking a trip to a bank branch a tedious exercise.

To this end, we seek advice and assistance from these financial institutions via social media platforms because they are faster, and a business that does not have an online presence is said to be doing poorly in terms of customer support. The engagements we see range from basic questions such as cheque processing delays to, god forbid, your bank account being emptied by fraudsters.

KCB, for instance, was engaged by a customer. Of course, customer queries are conveyed via direct messages or DM for privacy purposes, but this was not the case this time around. From what we could gather, the customer probably needed to inquire about his or her account balance, for which the social media handle at KCB replied on an open channel (via a tweet).

@KCBGroup check dm very urgent

— THANOS! (@MAD_T1TAN) December 10, 2019

The tweet, which has since been deleted for obvious reasons, gave away the customer’s account balance. Of course, people are livid about the exposure since financial matters are sensitive, and no one needs to know how poor or wealthy you are, especially in a space where the taxman is notorious for closing in on revenues that go untaxed. However, the privacy thing is the biggest concern here, and admittedly, that was a wrong move by whoever is handling the lender’s social media pages.