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Protect Yourself While Banking Online

Online banking may be convenient, but it’s also a way for crooks to steal your money! According to MSN, thieves are using several tricks to try and hack into people's online bank accounts and take their money. What kind of tricks? Among the most popular attacks are “phishing” schemes that duplicate bank websites and ask customers to log on to their accounts. Another method: Crooks send e-mails – supposedly from bank employees – asking for sensitive financial information. Or the crook will combine these two scams and send an e-mail containing a link that directs people to a bogus bank site. Other thieves use viruses, spyware, and “Trojan horses” to record your keystrokes as you type in sensitive financial information. These scams are doing some damage: One survey reports that about 3.2 BILLION dollars was lost to phishing attacks last year.

So does this mean you should avoid online banking? Not necessarily. One report notes that more than three-quarters of banking fraud stems from offline factors – such as check fraud, mail theft, or a lost wallet, and banks ARE trying to protect their customers. For example, Bank of America – along with other financial institutions – has started an alert system advising customers by e-mail or text every time a transaction occurs. Here are steps YOU can take to protect yourself:

• When logging on to a bank website, look CLOSELY at the site’s web address tomake sure it starts with “https.” The “S” stands for “secure”. Also, make sure the bank’s padlock is displayed in a corner of the site before you log on and NEVER log on to your bank from a link in an e-mail.
• Log on to banks ONLY from a secure computer. Never log on from a public computer in a hotel or café, and be careful when logging on to unknown wi-fi networks with a laptop.
• If you get any kind of unsolicited e-mail, CALL your bank. Don’t click on any links and never respond to an e-mail that requests personal information.
• Use a different user name and password for each financial account. The password should be complex – with numbers and symbols – and changed regularly.