Net-Banking…!?!

Alright, so we tried to figure out almost every aspect of Credit Card or plastic money. From today we will try to understand more about net banking…! The twin brother (or sister?) of our beloved Credit Card…!

Most internet frauds result from poor customer awareness. Here's how you can guard against them. The biggest concern for online customers is the possible theft of their online credentials, especially those relating to net banking. This often happens without the customers' knowledge, enabling fraudsters to steal money from their accounts in a recurring manner.

Identity Theft

The basic security threat a net banking customer is exposed to while transacting online is the compromise of his/her login credentials and other confidential and personal information. One of the most common threats that customers face online is 'phishing'. Phishing scammers send fraudulent email disguised as an official request from a bank for account information. Recipients of the scam mail are lured to believe that the email is from the bank and are prompted to click on a particular link. The click causes the fake website to open in a browser and the recipient is usually asked to input the user ID and password of his/her net banking profile. The fraudsters capture these details and use them to their advantage.

Customers get deceived and part with confidential information like an IPIN or net banking password, making it easy for the scamsters to commit a fraud.'Vishing' and 'identity theft' are some other ways through which customers are tricked to reveal their confidential information online. While 'phishing' is carried out via fraudulent emails, 'vishing' is orchestrated via bogus voice messages and phone calls. In 'identity theft' fraudsters try to obtain the key pieces of personal information such as date of birth, mother's maiden name, passport number, etc, to gain access to the customer's accounts.

In view of the increasing cases of online banking frauds, most banks have implemented 256-bit secure socket layer (SSL) encryption. It is recognized as the best industry standard for encryption of information transmission for net banking sessions.

Shun Pirated Software

Pirated software’s on an end-user's desktop should not pose any harm to safety features of online banking unless they are injected with malicious codes (malwares) or viruses specifically meant to dynamically alter contents of the visited pages or user input fields, a net banking page, for example, asking additional information such as credit/debit card numbers, ATM PIN, CVV details on a login page, which is never asked by any bank. Pirated software’s sometimes contain malwares or some sort of an automated virus initiated at the time of optical copying.

The biggest risk in using pirated software is that there is no security upgrades available for them. This leads to the software being vulnerable, which can be exploited by the latest Trojans. These Trojans can then steal customer information from the PC and transmit it to a fraudster. The solution to these concerns lies both with banks and customers. Bankers as well as IT experts believe it is not the security systems, but poor customer awareness that leads to most internet banking frauds.

Cyber cafes should be strictly avoided for online transactions. There are higher chances of viruses capturing your data from terminals in internet cafes, thereby increasing the scope of misuse. The line and systems of an internet cafe are usually not secure. There is no guarantee about the authenticity of the software on the cafe's system. Further, smart hackers will use desktop cookies saved in the system to access your bank account details. Some counterfeit software might inject key loggers, bots, spywares, which collect all the login credentials with keystroke entries or search locally for any password related files and send them to the fraudsters.

Computers with pirated software can sometimes behave erratically. The worst scenario is when you have downloaded counterfeit software that may be infected with viruses that will damage your hard drive or cripple your network. Also copying or using pirated/counterfeit copies of software at work or at home puts the entire company or individual at risk of copyright infringement, which may lead to civil penalties and criminal prosecution.

In view of this, banking sites are regularly scanned for any such injection of malwares or bots by pirated software’s to prevent malware from being downloaded from the banking site itself.

Stay tuned and we will learn more about Viruses and Safety tips...!