Cynergy Bank Authenticator 4+

It’s been a year since my original review on this and I still can’t believe how utterly crap this app is. I use four other banking services. Most of them are very good and have excellent authentication and security. HSBC is probably the most convoluted, however is still a walk in the park compared to this flaming dumpster fire of an application. Every time the app somehow manages to unregister itself, leading to having to go through a 10-minute registration process in order to check my balance. I wouldn’t be so peeved off if then the security was excellent on the site, however you’re not even allowed more than a certain amount of characters for a password. I feel whoever is the developer and IT manager for Cynergy should do us all a favour and try fruit picking as a career path instead…

This app gets a lot of flack because their other banks use SMS authentication or otherwise and the users are missing the inherent flaws and massive insecurity in these systems.

Yes this app is a bit clunky, you can’t sign in with a single device, you need to ring them if you change devices (relatively painless took me 5 minutes) BUT nearly every other system is flawed by the fact a scammer can phone you up and talk you into handing over your login details as they login to your bank.

Not here. To login you need to be in front of the actual machine signing in, with your device in hand, a scammer can’t get round this, so it may be hated by many, but it does make for a strong system once you understand it.

TL;DR: Believe the many reviews telling you how awful this app is. Just bank somewhere else. Opening a new, different bank account will be a lot less stress, hassle and frustration than trying to get the Cynergy app to work, never mind all the problems down the road.

I opened an account with Cyergy last week, planning to transfer most of my life savings into their grubby hands. Registered the app - but it failed. Tried again - also failed. Eventually got it registered - the whole app then locked up, and refused to do anything. Trying to get it to unlock meant repeatedly logging into the website which means - yes, they locked me out "for my own security".

I then spent half an hour on the phone with a man with a very thick accent, trying to get him to unlock my account, while he got more and more annoyed, and eventually told me that he could not unlock my account without my hanging up, calling them again, and going through this all over again - assuming no further problems.

I instead chose sanity, life and any other bank on the face of the earth.

If they are this bad with security, why on earth would I trust them with my £££££s?

Bank elsewhere.