I was a member of Horizon Banking, which I liked, when Washington Federal took them over with the bank collapsing fiasco.
Washington Federal has been ok but not great, I would have rated them a 3 star over the years.
However, they just changed their online banking system and the problems are horrendous. First, they changed how you accessed your account - instead of the old way with secure logins etc, you now had to login and use your social security number (last 6 digits) as your password. Even after you set up a new password, etc. access to the account doesn't necessarily work and wrong information is in the account as if they are mixing information from several accounts together - again likely to give others access to your account because their phone number goes to your account now.
They also say they link any phone number you call in on to the account, whether it is listed as a valid phone number on the account or not - so anyone who has access to that phone and knows basic information about you (like your birth date or last 4 of your social) can get access to your account info.
The online phone center has no clue - they just do the simple thing of getting into whatever account and giving you the info about the account, no caring that they didn't properly pull up the correct account nor validate the caller.
There are a lot of severe problems with the new online accounts, even a week later, and no end in sight of them being fixed.
Time to switch banks and find one that has at least basic security and working software. read more
