Oct 14, 2008 11:49 am US/Eastern
Is Online Banking Completely Safe?
BOSTON (WBZ) ―
It's estimated that 63 million households now do their banking online. It's fast, convenient, but is it completely secure?
No, says Atul Prakash, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan. "The problems are fairly pervasive. They apply to large and small banks."
Prakash looked for flaws in the Web sites of more than 200 banks, "We found that three-quarters of the banks in our study had at least one of the design flaws."
What kind of flaws? For a Web page to be absolutely secure, you need to see the letters https in the address bar. The "s" is the key to security. And what if you only see http without the "s"?
"There is no guarantee that it's actually coming from your bank," says Prakash.
WBZ checked the login pages for four popular New England banks:
Bank of America,
Sovereign,
Citizens and
TD Banknorth. All of the login pages were secure.
You could see the https, and that's good news.
But according to some security experts, that's not good enough. "When a bank builds a Web site, they should make sure that every single page, including the contact page that has e-mail address and phone numbers is also secured," says Robert Siciliano, a security expert and author of the book, "The Safety Minute."
So we checked the "Contact Us" pages.
Citizens Bank did have the https and even asked if you wanted to see insecure information.
The other three banks, Bank of America, Sovereign, and TD Banknorth all had insecure contact pages.
Read: Bank statements regarding online security.Siciliano explains why this can be dangerous, "A criminal hacker can just go right in, they can make changes to that page, and you may actually be calling fraudulent phone numbers."
That means you could end up giving important personal information to a complete stranger. "Your money could be stolen from your account, your identity could be stolen," explains Professor Prakash.
So is there anything consumers should do to protect themselves? "Pay close attention every month to every single statement whether it's your utility bills, your credit card bills, you banking statement, and make sure there is nothing out of place," says Siciliano.
Both Sicilano and Prakash bank online. And they say it is as safe as or safer than paper transactions. However, they want people to know the risks and the precautions for protecting your hard-earned money.
Bank of America, Sovereign Bank and TD Banknorth say their Web sites are secure and that customers should feel safe using online banking.
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