Online Banking

These days one can never be sure about how safe his or her sensitive financial information is.  With it being sent all over the Internet through an enormously wide network of so many computers, one cannot help but question the reliability of banking online.  This article should be able to help you in finding out whether you are banking safely on the Internet or not. 

One thing to be always sure about no matter what, is that you are on the correct website of your bank.  ALWAYS look in the address bar of your web browser and make sure that it's related to your bank and not some third party webhost.  Take for example, Citibank.  The normal Internet address when you might login onto electronic banking services on the Citibank website might be:

https://login-net.citibank.com/en-us/login.aspx

Or something similar.  Now take a look at this web address:

http://login-net.citibank.com-863.f9.hz80-36.250m.com/en-us/login.aspx

Notice the difference?  The first genuine address is linked to Citibank.com, whereas the second one is linked to 250m.com, a free webhost.  That sounds fishy because Citibank would never host their website on a free webhost.  This thing is called 'phishing', that is to say a website or email that appears to be from a company like eBay, Paypal or Citibank, but is actually from a fraudulent scammer who made a fake website and/or email. 

Scammers hope that people will only look at the first few words of the address and ignore the rest, however this is something that you should not do.  Always be sure to read the address until you reach a forward slash and make sure that just before that slash it says Citibank.com or the name of your bank.  Otherwise entering your bank account details on a third party website which could be a copy of the original Citibank one could lead you to have your bank account details stolen. 

A good thing to do is to get anti-phishing software for your web browser.  Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 includes an Anti-Phishing filter, be sure it is turned on.  For Mozilla Firefox you can download and install addons and extensions that detect whether the website you are visiting is legitimate or not. 
If you use GMail's webmail service, it has an excellent anti-phishing filter that checks all your mail. 

Another thing you should always check for whenever logging on to your banking website or making an online transaction is to see if your web address begins with HTTPS instead of HTTP.  HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol and HTTPS stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure - which means that any data that you send over the Internet to this page beginning with HTTPS shall be sent over a reliable and secure 128 bit encrypted connection, but you should make sure first that the security connection certificate is signed by a reliable company.  The most trusted and reliable company that issues HTTPS security certificates is called VeriSign, but nonetheless there are other companies that are still reliable.  Just always make sure that whenever entering financial details online like your credit card or account number that the address begins with HTTPS and double click on a lock which should be in the lower pane or in the address pane of your browser to check and verify the certificate. 

Whenever you get an email or website that you think is fake and fraudulent, forward a copy of the mail and if necessary, a link to the website to the anti-phishing department of the company it is concerned with.  For example, if you get a fake mail that appears to be from Citibank, inquire on Citibank's real website for any such anti-phishing contacts and forward a copy of the mail to them. 

Sometimes, even if you are logging onto the real banking website, viruses known as keyloggers record every single thing that you type into your computer and send it back to the person who sent it to you.  In this case, you can use an On-Screen Virtual Keyboard to type in certain letters by using the mouse, which the keylogger most probably will not be able to detect the keys typed in from the virtual keyboard.  You can activate this virtual keyboard in Microsoft Windows by clicking Start, then Programs, then Accessories, then Accessibility and finally On-Screen Keyboard. 

Such virtual keyboards, however, are most definitely not a substitute for proper protection from keyloggers.  Always make sure that your computer is protected against viruses, trojans, keyloggers, spyware and hackers by using anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall software.  In case you have not purchased any commercial protection software for your computer, freeware alternatives are listed below:

Free version of Zone Alarm Firewall, meant for non-commercial usage only. 

 AVG Antivirus Free and AVG Antispyware Free, meant for single user, non-commercial usage only. 

 Spybot: Search & Destroy - freeware, open source antispyware solution. 

 Firefox is a free, open-source web browser that is more efficient, faster, has tabbed browsing and it protects you from most web sites that try to exploits Microsoft Internet Explorer's security vulnerabilities. 

Good Luck and stay safe on the Internet!