The Department of Education (DepEd) on Monday, Jan. 24, urged its personnel to immediately report any issues related to their payroll accounts to their respective schools division offices.
DepEd issued a statement following a report citing that some teachers were having issues with Landbank’s Online Banking feature.
“While the DepEd Central Office has not received any formal incident reports yet, it is currently validating these claims with its field offices,” DepEd said. In a separate statement, the Teachers’ Dignity Coalition (TDC) claimed that the Landbank accounts of some public school teachers “were hacked” due to unauthorized withdrawals.
“The amount stolen from individual teachers so far ranges from P26,000 to P121,000 or from their regular salary and holiday bonuses to lifetime savings,” the TDC claimed.
READ:
https://mb.com.ph/2022/01/24/deped-validating-report-on-hacked-bank-accounts-of-teachers/
Following this, DepEd said that the Landbank had already reached out to the agency regarding the matter.
DepEd said that Landbank gave an assurance that “cases on unauthorized withdrawals are properly handled and given utmost attention.” With this development, DepEd enjoined its personnel to immediately inform their respective divisions and report any issues to their nearest Landbank branch.
Meanwhile, Landbank -- in a statement -- also assured that its systems were not hacked and that they remain “safe and secure” despite the reports coming from the teachers.
Contrary to the claim of TDC and based on its initial investigation, Landbank said that the “devices of the teachers were hacked via phishing which compromised their personal information.”
Given this, Landbank said that it has “already reached out to the affected customers and is working on the resolution of these isolated cases at the soonest possible time.”
Landbank and DepEd also advised the public to remain vigilant during their transactions online and refrain from clicking suspicious emails, links, and other attachments.