Standard Bank compromising account information security?

I just had a weird experience with Standard Bank. My wife got a call this morning from someone purporting to be from Standard Bank about a glitch with my business account. She was told that a payment had to be made into that account and she was given my account details for the payment.

We were concerned this might be a scam but the account details were mine and the payment my wife made did enter my account.

The problem is that my wife is not associated with my account or a signatory on my account. In fact she is pretty much uninvolved in my business’ financial affairs. After battling to find a working line to my branch I discovered that my wife’s contact details don’t appear on any of my banking profiles so it is a mystery how this person at the bank got her details.

It is also very troubling that this person at the bank has no difficulty handing out my account information to people who are not authorised to receive it. There are a number of scams doing the rounds at the moment, one of which involves faked deposits into a bank account followed by demands for repayment of the “erroneous” deposit. Often these deposits are made using cheques which subsequently bounce leaving the account holding left with the debt. These sorts of scams are made possible with account numbers.

I called my branch and it is a further mystery who called my wife because whoever did it, didn’t log the call or make any note about it whatsoever. This experience leaves me wondering how many other account holders’ personal information is passed around so casually to people who aren’t authorised to deal with those accounts?