A Simple Way To Make Online Banking Safe. Really.
The City of London Police had considered asking financial regulators to make individual savers, rather than banks, liable for fraud losses.
The force was worried that the knowledge that someone else would pick up the bill reduced the incentive for bank customers to take proper precautions against online hackers.
In the end, the police, sensing that the public would see the proposals as letting bankers, our least popular citizens, off the hook at the expense of ordinary people, decided to take a different approach to the problem. A public education exercise will publicise the steps that those who bank online need to take to protect their computers from the hackers.
This initiative is entirely worthy, of course. But I think there’s a much better way to enjoy the benefits of online banking while keeping your money safe from fraudsters.
It is simply this: ditch your PC and get a Smartphone
This advice may sound counter-intuitive. Surely big, static computers, or even laptops, are more suited to serious uses such as running our bank accounts, while smartphones are the preserve of teenagers busily tweeting or texting their friends?
It’s a plausible argument, but wrong. Windows PCs are among the most versatile machines ever produced, but that versatility comes at a cost. Anyone can write a program that runs on a PC, and millions have been written over the years. All you need is the technical skill and a means of delivering it to the targeted computer. This applies even if your program is malicious, and indeed tens of thousands of such pieces of software have been devised over the years.
Some have been for the creator’s amusement, to cause disruption or to attract attention, but these days most are designed for stealing information or money.
It is possible to defend your computer against these malicious programs, but it takes an awful lot of effort. There is no single piece of hardware or software that will do the job; you need a multi-faceted approach including “firewall” software, an antivirus program and an operating system that is regularly updated with the latest improvements.
Keeping up with this is hard enough for computer enthusiasts such as me. For those who understand how a computer operates about as much as they comprehend the workings of a spacecraft, and especially if they are very elderly, the process must be utterly baffling.
It’s all very different with a smartphone. These devices have two crucial advantages when it comes to security. First, their software is far more modern, designed in a world in which the dangers of malicious software were thoroughly appreciated.
Second, and unlike the position with a PC, it’s not possible to load any old software on a smartphone. The only way to install a program on an iPhone or Android device is to visit the appropriate “app store”, and programs are allowed in an app store only once they have been vetted by Apple or the equivalent vendor.
If you own both a PC and a smartphone, the contrast between the hassle of keeping the former safe and the “just use it” feel of the latter is one of the joys of the handheld device.
There is a further point. Banks do have the right, although I’m not sure how often they use it, to refuse a refund for online fraud if you have not taken reasonable steps to keep your device safe. But if you bank via a smartphone app you are using your bank’s own software on a device that it has deemed safe enough to host it in normal circumstances. If a vulnerability should arise, it’s down to the bank, or Apple or other device maker, to provide the update needed to restore security.
So, whatever your age, if you want to bank online it’s time to step into the age of the smartphone.
