On-Line Banking Fraud

The main reason that on line banking is not as secure as it might be is totally down to the Banks and their system designers.

I have designed systems and programmed computers for forty years and have been involved with the Internet and writing web sites for the last ten. I believe that a few simple checks, when banks communicate with their customers would go a long way to eliminate the problem of on-line fraud and particularly of ‘phishing’.

1. When you sign up for an on-line bank account, it would be a simple matter for the bank to request a phrase in your profile, just as they request a check question for lost passwords. This phrase would then be used in all communications with the customer. No phrase and the customer just ignores the message.

2. All communications from the bank to the customer should be numbered. If there is no number or it’s not in sequence, then either a message has gone missing or the current one is not what it seems.

My on-line bank doesn’t seem give too much guidance about the methods used to extract your passwords. Perhaps they should do this and also give examples of the sort of illegal messages you get sent.

It surprises me that no bank has taken such simple steps like this to cut down the on-line fraud.

But then their reluctance to introduce chip and pin for credit cards, showed a similar ‘head in the sand’ attitude.