Use of e-transfers to send abusive messages on the rise

We’re going to lead off this hour with a CBC News investigation looking into a disturbing way that abusers can use technology from Canada’s big Banks to harass their victims and that’s at a time when all other forms of communication have been blocked now you’ll remember that we brought you the

Story earlier this week of Angie Sweeney she was killed by her former partner in her home in Sous St Marie Ontario in a shocking incident of intimate partner violence before she was killed she had blocked her partner on every platform social media mechanism anything she

Could think of but he found a way around that and started sending her abusive messages through ET transfers it was Katie Nicholson who brought us that part of the story earlier this week and she’s been digging into the issue since back with me to begin this hour tell me a

Little bit more about how this works Katie but also what Canadian banks are doing to address this so essentially this is when you try to send some somebody an e transfer there’s usually a little box where you can attach a message it’s often just sort of this is

For um the that I bought yeah here’s your money this is what it’s for sort of thing uh in this case what we learned is that Bobby Howard used it to put abusive messages um just to be able to get another way to reach Angie Sweeney uh we

Asked Canada’s big Banks is this something that you’re you’re tackling is it a problem what are you doing to put in place to protect people only TD and uh which was Angie Bank uh and Interac got back to us TD said that they were appalled to hear about this and they

Encourage anybody who gets an abusive e transfer to contact them interact told us that when they get uh any kind of a notification that there has been an abuse of e transfer they will notify the financial institution what we heard though from the institution is that they

Don’t have a way of blocking uh a specific e transfer uh to a specific email so if somebody is sending uh a bank something to your account there is no way to really block that uh that email or or that uh that uh sometimes it’s to your your cell number that sort

Of thing so they don’t have that in place and this is a particularly Insidious form of uh technology- based gender violence or a Technology based gender-based violence uh we hear from Canadian women shelters um and so we we sort of talk to uh it’s um ranne and

Wong who’s in Vancouver and she looks at this uh she looks at the different ways that online harassment uh plays out for people trying to leave uh relationships so sometimes that’s threats and enh harassment through new technologies things like e transfer she she doesn’t know how often this happens in Canada

But that is one of the most common things this sort of new emerging Technologies as a way of getting to uh a way of abusers using to to get to the people that they are trying to victimize uh and so she says this is really a particular Insidious form of abuse

Because when you think about it people who are trying to leave an abusive relationship often there are children involved there are issues of spousal support there are Financial vulnerabilities and so uh women have to decide if they’re going to open these abusive messages or not here’s ran and

Wong often times folks have to send um custody or spousal support to to somebody and in terms of an abusive relationship uh often times a Survivor has to decide on if they’re going to actively resist and put up um and view these harassing and threatening messages

Um or not be able to put food on their on the table and so they have to make that choice um especially because there are no reporting systems through e transfer in in a lot of the major banking corporations right now and the online harms act the the bill uh that

Was tabled on Monday it does not include the specific type of of online harassment and Wong says that was a big miss you know this is not something that’s limited to Canada this is something that as you’ve investigated further is occurring elsewhere in Australia notably they’ve really dealt

With this so what have you found out yeah this became a huge issue specifically during the pandemic and so Banks they introduced filtering software uh so you can’t actually if I put was going to send you something and I had some I I said nasty things about you in

The the taex part the bank would prevent me from sending that message I cannot send the E transfer if it has certain abusive um identified words in it uh and One Bank the Commonwealth Bank uh it’s been so successful with this filter they say it’s blocked 400,000 abusive e

Transfers a year since they brought it in they have brought in the the the source code that they use for this successful filtering system they are offering it free to any Bank any financial institution in the world that wants to bring this in to minimize harms to to people who are being abused

Victims and survivors uh so that’s one thing another uh thing that uh one other bank did is they created a reporting tool so uh if you do get an abusive e transfer you can automatically through your app report that to the bank as well but to underscore those are things that

Are available in Canada to the banks should they want to adopt them haven’t yet call down under they’ll share the source code right

Abusers can use e-transfer systems to harass their victims even after getting blocked on other communication platforms. Australian banks are cracking down on abusive e-transfers by blocking certain abusive language.

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