Banking in depth

Banking with confidence

May 2007

Keep a weather eye open

Checking your account on a regular basis is the number one way to protect yourself against fraudulent activity. It will alert you towards any abnormal transactions as soon as they happen, and if you do discover any then it will allow you to tackle them more quickly than if you are relying on monthly paper statements.

Familiarise yourself with phishing

Don’t be fooled by emails which claim that your bank account will be closed down if you do not act immediately. No bank will terminate the account of a customer unless there is an extremely good reason for it, and you will always receive notification through the post in advance of any such action.

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Majority of online bank accounts have a messaging facility, so if you do receive a suspicious email then it’s best to log into your bank account to see if another email has simultaneously been sent to your online messaging inbox.

Know the signs

Generic greetings are the main way that fraudsters try to gain your trust – be wary if you do not see your first and last name and instead you are addressed with ‘Dear Customer’. Also pay close attention to the tone of voice and any misspelling or grammatical errors, as these are all sure-fire indicators of bogus emails. If you are in any way doubtful then avoid entering any of your information and instead contact your bank to verify the situation.

Watch where you click

You may be familiar with phishing but you also need to watch out for pharming. This is when a fraudster attempts to re-direct you from part of a company’s real website to a cloned site. Don’t fret though, you will be able to spot the difference as the fake page will not be the same as one you are used to seeing.

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Always access your bank account from your own bookmark or from your bank’s actual website – never click through from anywhere else. Spoof emails redirect you to unstable pages which will try to capture personal info or even infect your machine with a virus. If you see an '@' sign in the middle of a web link then there’s a good chance it is a spoof – if in doubt move your mouse over it first to see exactly where it will take you.

Ultimately, a bank will never ask for all of your security details at once. Instead you will need to list a random selection of letters or numbers in your secret password or a combination of other information, not every single one.

Guard your details

Keep your card details guarded at all times, as you would your PIN at a cash point. Check that a padlock icon appears the page and that the URL begins with https:// - where the ‘s’ stands for ‘secure’. The latter will always be there, although the existence of the padlock may vary from site to site. When using a public computer such as at work or in an internet café, make sure that you take extra care. Keep your passwords hidden and always log out afterwards, don’t just close the page down.

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Update, update, update

Make sure that your computer software is up to date. If your anti-virus and firewall programs are updated to the best version available then you stand a far better chance of repelling any potential infection. Guarding your computer against adware and spyware is also highly useful to make doubly sure sensitive personal information is never disclosed.

Vary your password

Leaving the default password intact on your computer or router could pose problems. Fraudsters will take any opportunity to exploit the typical formats, especially if they already have some of your details – whether this is your date of birth, your first name, or simply 1234. If you make your password unique to you then it’s harder to guess and therefore you considerably lower your chances of being hacked – experts recommend a combination of capital letters, lower case letters and numbers.

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Encrypt your router

Don’t be fooled into thinking that your home internet is immune to fraudsters. The majority of broadband internet is now wireless enabled so when you search for your own connection, you will normally find you register your neighbour’s at the same time even if they connect using cables.

This might seem like quite a harmless discovery, but if you don’t password protect your router and therefore your connection you put yourself in a very vulnerable position. As well as leaving yourself open to thieves looking to steal card details using past internet transactions, you could find that someone else is exploiting your internet for free, using up download quotas and lowering the connection speed.

Be vigilant

If you do get a suspiscious email from someone claiming to be from your bank then forward it on. Most banks have a special section on their website dedicated to preventing this type of crime and will provide you with an email address to forward anything bogus onto. It will take two seconds and will hopefully help them work towards preventing it in the future.

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Similarly, if you feel you could be at risk of ID fraud then it is important to get your hands on a copy of your credit report and check to see if all is in order.