Online Banking & Online Banking Security

Online Banking

Online banking is a convenient way to keep track of your finances. I use US Bank online just about everyday, but there are things that you should know before you get started with online banking. The first thing that most people get in the habit of doing with online banking is they use it as there checking register. I know that I started to rely on the US Bank website to maintain my checking account, and I made a big mistake. Check card authorizations, although they don't take the money out of your account right away, as soon as you run that card, you don't have the money. This can be misleading when banking online, because you see your balance and your money looks like it is still there. Be rest assured that it isn't, you have to look at your available balance. Banks also don't have any obligation to get the transactions online the same day the get put through. What I mean be this, is just because you get paid on Friday, and you check you banks website after hours and you have $20 in your account. You know you wrote a check that hasn't been put through yet for $30, well that doesn't really mean that it didn't get put through, it just means that it isn't online. I've been burned by this one a time or two, so make sure you still use your bank register in your check book.

Online Security

Your bank will also never ask you by email or phone to verify your account information. I've received these emails too, and they are what is know as a phishing scam. You might click on the link provided in the email, and the site might look like bank of America online banking , but you have to look at the URL. Let me give you a little lesson about the web, in case you are unfamiliar with this. A URL is like a phone number, it is used to tell your computer where to find the web page that you are looking for. The URL for this site is http://online-banking.freemortgagecalculator.net, there are multiple parts to a URL. The http:// stands for Hypertext Transport Protocol, this isn't really important for your purposes, the second part is what is called a subdomain. The subdomain is online-banking, and subdomains are used to break up a larger site into different sections. This is normally where you would see the www, which stands for World Wide Web, and isn't present when there is a subdomain. The third part is the actual domain, which is freemortgagecalculator. If I was in talking about US Bank, the domain would be usbank, that is the part you would want to look at to see if it is really your bank. If I wanted to spoof the usbank.com website, I could create a website called usbank.helpdesk.com, this can be made to look like you are going to the usbank website, when you really are not, you would in this case be in a subdomain of helpdesk.com. The site owners of helpdesk.com can create subdomains, and call them what ever they want.

Having a firewall on your personal computer is also important. Microsoft XP comes standard with this, and to turn it on goto Start => Control Panel => Windows Firewall and then make sure that it is turned on. Another concern is wide area networks, this is if you have a laptop and can log on in the park. WAN's are not really secure at all, so when you use your laptop in this manner, remember to not do anything that you wouldn't do if someone you didn't know was standing over your shoulder and watching everything you do. Just because you can't see them, doesn't mean that aren't spying on you. You should also make sure that you choose a password that isn't easy to crack, using the same number as your pin is about the most irresponsible thing that you can do. All number passwords are easy to crack because there is an easy program method called loops to make a computer guess your password lightning fast. You should choose a password that contains upper and lower case letters, and mixing in a number or two. This would make it almost impossible to guess your password, or to even write a program that could guess it for a identity thief. I know that you must have lots of passwords, and trying to remember all of them is hard, and an inconvenience but it will be more of an inconvenience if you have your identity stolen.