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Online Banking Safety: Protect Your Personal Info Online
Onguardonline.gov provides practical tips to help you be on
guard against Internet fraud, secure your computer and protect your personal information.
How to Practice Safe Computing
The number and sophistication of phishing and spoofing scams sent out to consumers is continuing to increase dramatically. While online banking is widely considered to be as safe as or safer than in-branch or ATM banking, as a general rule you should be careful about giving out your personal financial information over the Internet. Remember, no reputable financial institution will ever request your personal information via e-mail.
Here is a list of recommendations to follow in order to avoid becoming a victim of scams:
- Be suspicious of any e-mail with urgent requests for personal financial information. Phishers have been known to include upsetting or enticing (false) statements in their e-mails to get people to react immediately. More recently, some phishers have toned down their language, as e-mail recipients have become more aware of the use of this tactic. Either way, the e-mail typically aks for information such as user anmes, passwords, credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, etc.
- Be careful of e-mails that are not personalized and/or may contain spelling errors and/or awkward syntax and phrasing. Many phishing e-mails are sent in great bulk and, therefore, are not personalized. If you are suspicious of an e-mail claiming to be from your institution that is not personalized, call your institution before responding. Many also are being sent from other countries from individual for whom English is a foreign language, thus resulting in misspelled words and awkward syntax and phrasing.
- Be careful of personalized e-mails that ask for personal financial information. Be suspicious of any e-mail that contains some personal financial information, such as a bank account number and asks for other information, such as a PIN. Bank of Ann Arbor will never ask for or send your personal information by e-mail.
- Do not use links in an e-mail to get to any Web page. Instead, call the bank on the telephone to confirm the address, or log onto the Web site directly by typing in the Web address in your browser.
- Do not complete forms in e-mail messages that ask for personal financial information. Bank of Ann Arbor would never ask you to complete such a form within an e-mail message.
- Only communicate information, such as credit card numbers or account information, via a secure Web site or the telephone. When submitting financial information to a Web site, look for the padlock or key icon at the bottomw of your browser, and make sure the Internet address begins with "https." A secure Web server designation can be found by checking the beginning of the Web address in your browser's address bar-the address should begin https://... rather than just http://... While you can not be completely sure that a Web site is secure when its address starts with "https," you can be sure the Web site is not secure when it doesn't.
- Regularly log on to your online accounts and check your bank, credit and debit card statements to ensure that all transactions are legitimate. One of the real advantages of banking online is being able to regularly review your account for unauthorized or unusual activity. If anything is suspicious, contact your bank and all card issuers immediately.
- Ensure that your browser is up to date and security patches applied. Always visit your browser's home page to download the latest security updates even if they don't alert you to do so.
- Use online statements to reduce the volume of paper mailed. Paper today is the cause for more actually instances of identity fraud than electronic thefts.
