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Comment by markl42 | Hacker News Reader

Good.

When I moved to the US from the UK, I already had British HSBC accounts, so thought it made sense to open up an HSBC account and credit card. Got a $200 credit limit (thanks?), awful app, terrible customer service...eventually got fed up and closed all my accounts. Good riddance.

Also side note while I’m on the topic - to log into chase and do stuff, I enter my password. That’s it.

To log into HSBC or any other UK bank, you need to enter the 8th, 3rd and 19th letter of your password, app generated security token, digital security key password, the 822nd digit of Pi and the current orbital trajectory of Jupiter.

Can I please please just have normal 2FA...

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I keep forgetting the 822nd digit of pi. Thankfully I remember most of my planetary orbital physics so I'm usually good for the last one

I used to HATE those password screens. I moved to Starling and never looked back!

I've been with HSBC for over 10 years and never experienced any problems even though I'm fairly allergic to dumb UX. I use the iOS app which has 2FA (touch id) to do everything. Last time I logged in via a web browser was years ago, I can't even remember the interface. I can't quite agree with you as I think more security layers are better when it comes to your personal bank account.

With that said HSBC is not the best retail bank as individuals were never their primary target base. I've had a few problems with them but only when dealing with branch personnel. For anyone in the UK wanting to move away from HSBC but don't know where, look at First Direct. It's a retail bank owned by HSBC group but it's been consistently voted among top three banks every year by customers.

More security layers doesn’t always == better security

The “nth nth and nth” character of your password means they’re storing your password in plaintext, and Auntie Nora is more likely to have it written on a postit cos she can’t use a password manager.

“Name of your first school” etc type questions are obviously awful

My favorite is HSBC kept asking me to enable “voice identification” every time I phoned up as a “more secure way” of authenticating myself...which to me smells like a cat and mouse game between who has the better ML model. Oh also https://www.computing.co.uk/news/3010450/hsbc-voice-recognit...

I moved in the opposite direction and Monzo was not available yet in the US. Fortunately I get to keep my HSBC Premier US account and its free instant transfers between US and UK.

HSBC makes most of its profits from China and the new Cold War means it will eventually have to spin off its core but less profitable UK business to survive scruteront the Chinese Communist Party.

> Can I please please just have normal 2FA

The HSBC mobile banking app is much more normal that way - Touch ID is sufficient - and it can do 95% of what you want to do most days. (Pretty much everything for me bar opening/closing accounts and making/renewing mortgage contracts.)

Yes, it is completely crazy.

I have no idea who is the retarded in charge of their security but it clearly makes no sense:

In the end, instead of a password, it asks me what is the name of my favorite animal to connect...

En even for the password, it's useless to have a long one because they will never ask you anything else than the 4 first or last chars. I'm also quite sure that because of that, they have to store in clear text your password or have to store multiple hash for each set of 4 letters in your pass. That would also be stupid...

To login, I just use my fingerprint.

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