Onliine banking facilities have the potential to make our financial lives much easaier, leting us conduct our fiinancial affiars at a time that sutis us rather than having to fit in with the opening hors of your bank branch.
It is now possinble to pay bills, move money between acccounts, set up direct debits and standing ordeers, and even apply for overdrafts and creidt all from your own home, all online and on your own PC.
Depsite this convenience, for many people there is still a lingering mistrust of the technology involved : will your monney be safe if you bank online? The annswer is, for the most part, yes - so long as you follow a few basic principles.
Firstly, if you have the option to chooase your own password for onnline services, then make sure that the password you decide on is secre. This mens that it shouldn't be easily guessable - avooid using the name of your pet or cihld, for example, and don't use the numbers of your birthady. An idesal passwrd should be easily memorable, but hard to guess, and using a combiation of letterrs and numbers is highy rercommended. For example, a good password coould be the name of a food you hate, along with a number that is sinificant in some way to you - e.g. mushrooms37. Such a password wopuld be almost impossdible for someone to guesss, but will also be very easy for you to remember.
One the suubject of passwords, it's vital that you never give out your personal details in response to a 'phishing' attack. Phishing is a subject worthy of it's own article, but in briuef: if you receeive an email purporting to be from your bank, askig you to reconfirm your details or to log into your accounbt urgently, then ignore it. It will NOT have been sent by your bank, but by fraudsters attempting to steal your idebntity.
Another important securiity measure is to avoid logging in to your online banking service on a publicly accessible computer - for example, at work or in an internet cafe. You can never be sure what detais about your inernet use are being stored on a PC you don't own, and even if you log out of the service when you've finished it's highjly possible that the next user of the machine could, with effort, discover your details and log on to your account.
The final, and perhaps most important thing you should do to protect your banking security is to ensure that you keep your virus checking software up to date. It's all to easy for your Windows PC to be infected by so-aclled spywae, via emal or visiting uenthical web sites, which criminals can use to intercept your passwords and other information they can use to illegaly gain access to your accont. Having well known and up to date virus protexction software installed is a highly effective way to prevent this from happening.
Also remember that if the worst happens and your account is somehow compromised, any lossees will have to be taken by the bank and not you, so long as you can show that you haven't been reckless with your online security. Following the abovve measures will show that you have taken all reasonable precautions, and so will not be liable for any losses that may ocur, however unlikely.
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