Bank Run Rumours - occupy your atm

Asked by ABCNews.com if his company is advising any of the companies that have been the focus of the protests, Schiavone said company policy prohibited him from making any comments about their clients. He did say that Listenlogic's clients included Fortune 500 companies covering finance, consumer package goods, healthcare, food and others.ListenLogic, he says, only monitors: it makes no effort to distinguish between threats that are real and those that are false or merely bluster.For example, ListenLogic is warning of a possible run on banks by flash-mob groups trying, en masse, to withdraw their savings from Bank America and other targeted banks. Schiavone says he is seeing an increase in web references to "run on the bank" and "bank transfer"--independent of any mention of Occupy.One such posting, which so far has drawn 100,000 viewers, can be found on YouTube. It purports to show depositors in St. Louis being restrained by a police SWAT team from entering a Bank of American branch.One small problem: The YouTube account isn't true.There's no question that a protest of some kind took place outside a Bank of America branch in St. Louis. But it took place before the existence of the Occupy movement, and no source confirms that it was an effort by depositors to withdraw their money. A spokesman for Bank of America categorically refutes that the incident was a bank run or that depositors were at any time prevented from withdrawing funds. In fact Shtfplan.com, one of the websites that first reported the incident as a "run," has since recanted its account, admitting that the incident was "not a reflection of Occupy protests."Schiavone shrugs off the distinction between truth and fiction, making the point that anything seen by 100,000 people has the power to inspire imitation, and, in this instance, to be a threat to banks or other financial institutions."Not everything people say on the web is true," he allows. "But social media postings don't have to be true to hurt.