Personally, I love the convenience of conducting my finances online. I know that there are risk/reward tradeoffs to virtually every human endeavor, and that moving my banking offline wouldn’t eliminate my vulnerability, as I discussed in “
How safe is your financial information?”Contact: Palatable Insight Concept:
palatableinsight@yahoo.com for more detailed information.
Indeed, there are plenty of ways for thieves to access your checking account offline. Here are just a few:
Thieves can swipe your mail, pull out a check you’ve written, soak off the ink with nail-polish remover and write themselves a fat payday.
They can steal your wallet and use your ATM, particularly if you wrote the PIN on your card (a big no-no -- but people still do it).
They can set up phony ATM machines, or devices that fit over legitimate ATMs, then record the information from the magnetic stripe along with your PIN.
Then there’s the possibility of an inside job: a bank employee with access to all your account numbers, user IDs and passwords who simply decides to help himself.
But there’s strong circumstantial evidence that thieves are becoming more experienced at raiding accounts online, and that should concern anyone who uses online banking.Consider that around 45% of adults with Internet access use the Web to bank or pay bills. Among those whose checking accounts had been raided, 70% were online finance users, Gartner said.
When bad guys go 'phishing,' you're on the lineThe rise in checking-account hijacks also corresponds with the rise in “phishing” -- e-mails that purport to be from a financial institution but that route the user to a bogus site that collects their account numbers and passwords.
Which brings us to the final weak link in the security chain: you and me. There’s still a lot we need to do to protect ourselves while we wait for better security solutions, such as:
Don’t expose yourself. Never use a public computer or wireless “hot spot” for financial transactions.
Beef up your security. If you use Internet Explorer, Microsoft recommends cranking the security setting on your Internet browser up to “high” (you’ll find it under the Tools menu; click on Internet Options and look for the security tab, then select Internet Zone). This may keep some Web sites from working properly, but you can make exceptions for trusted sites. (You can find more details with
palatableinsight@yahoo.com .)
Use a credit card for online purchases. Technically, debit cards with the Visa or MasterCard logo offer you the same no-liability coverage for fraud that credit cards give you, but you have to wait a few days for the bank to restore the money to your account. Better to have a middleman like a credit card company between a thief and your checking account.
Don’t click. You probably know by now not to open spam e-mails or download attachments from unknown sources. But e-mail links in instant messages, Web message boards and Internet relay chats (IRC) also can be malicious. If a financial institution sends you an e-mail relating to an “urgent problem” or other matter pertaining to your account, use the phone number printed on your statement to respond.
Block pop-ups. Besides being incredibly annoying, pop-ups can be used to install hackers’ software on your computer. Many Internet service providers now have pop-up software built in, or you can get blocking software from sites such as
Panicware.com.
Monitor, monitor, monitor. You need to take a careful look at your bank and bill-pay transactions. Don’t assume that odd $40 electronic transfer or check is a payment you just forgot about; it could be a scammer probing to see if the fraud will go unnoticed. With bill payment systems, review your payment history as well as your payee list to make sure there aren’t any unauthorized transactions. The sooner you report the theft the better; after 60 days, the bank may be under no legal obligation to provide a refund.
Stay up to date.
Run Windows Update to keep current on the latest security patches. If you use Internet Explorer and have increased your security to “high,” you’ll need to follow the instructions on
this link for the update to work properly.
Inject some variety. Don’t use the same user ID and passwords at different financial institutions. If you’re asked to create a security question and answer, don’t use one that’s relatively easy to discover, such as your mother’s maiden name.
Inoculate yourself. Keep your virus software up-to-date and run frequent scans to check for problems.
You could, of course, deal with the problem by simply not banking or paying bills online. But, as I mentioned earlier, that still doesn't eliminate your vulnerability to dishonest insiders or hackers who access bank databases. Some thieves have even been able to view electronic impressions of victims' paper checks and devise new bogus checks that way.Offline safety tipsYou can reduce your offline risk somewhat by:
Using gel pens to write checks. These inks can't be easily dissolved.
Get a locking mailbox. Make theft of your checks more difficult by locking up your mail and delivering any outgoing checks directly to the post office (In other words, don't let them sit in your mailbox).
Monitor, monitor, monitor. Check your bank account statements religiously. Be alert for any unauthorized transaction, regardless of the size.
Don't write down your password. Especially don't scribble the PIN on the ATM or debit card itself, or anywhere else in your wallet.
Use your credit card for "out of sight" transactions. That waiter who disappears with your debit card could swipe it through a "skimmer," a handheld device that records the information on the magnetic stripe. They can do that with a credit card, too, but again, fixing a fraud problem is easier with a credit card than with a debit card.
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