Internet Scams Add to Worries of Online Banks
The advent of the Internet has been a huge boon to the banking
industry. Long concerned about the costs of doing business,
banks have quickly embraced the Internet as a way of doing
business with their customers without having to pay employees to
handle the transactions. The Internet is open for business 24
hours a day and a "teller" is always on call in the form of a
fully automated system.
Unfortunately, certain clever
criminals have made the very notion of online banking inherently
risky. Using a system known as "phishing", these unscrupulous
types have sent out millions of e-mail messages that appear to
be from legitimate banking institutions, asking customers for
personal information, such as usernames, passwords, credit card
numbers and Social Security numbers. Many people have replied to
these messages without realizing that they are not from their
bank, but from someone who wants to steal information from them.
An even worse problem is that of "pharming" where
malicious code directs customers who are trying to find a bank's
Website to a site that the criminals have set up that looks just
like the real one. This one, however, is only there to steal
information.
This has led to some customers losing
money, as the crooks have been able to infiltrate their bank
accounts using the stolen information. An even worse outcome is
that there is not a bit more unease among all consumers about
engaging in financial transactions online.
There are a
number of solutions in the works. Some of them involve more
detailed questions of customers as the log in, so that their
identities can be more accurately confirmed and so that the
customers can be assured that they are at the right Website. The
hardware solutions are more effective, as they require that the
customer use a physical device to connect, such as a card that
displays a number that changes once a minute that only the real
bank's server knows.
The problems with these solutions
are cost and the problem of physically distributing the devices
to the public. Internet commerce is still in its youth, and
these problems will eventually go away as the entire system
becomes more sophisticated. In the meantime, customers who bank
online should make a habit of becoming more cautions as they use
the Web for financial purposes.