Are you a Savvy Surfer?
How to make sure your online financial transactions are more secure
Be honest. Your password for that current account is just the word ‘password’ isn’t it? “Don’t be ridiculous” I hear you scream, “I would never be so stupid and you suggesting as much is an insult to my intelligence”. Well then. What is your password? Is it strong? By ‘strong’, we mean is it 14 characters long? Because that’s what the boffins at Microsoft recommend, and by all accounts (no pun intended) they know a thing or two about all this intangible technology we’re using to send our money flying around the ether.
It’s boring, making sure you’re a savvy surfer negotiating the financial seas safely. But ultimately it’s definitely worthwhile. We’ve all heard a horror story about someone buying tickets to a gig that doesn’t exist and we’ve all been told how someone’s great-aunt lost her life’s savings in a dubious online poker forum. You haven’t? Well it definitely happens and incidences of online fraud appear to be on increase as criminals keep up with technology to find ever more clever ways of relieving us honest Aussies of our cash.
The bottom line is that there are steps you’ve just got to take to make sure your online finances are of the secure variety, and you don’t have to be Edward Snowden to blow the lid off this one.
Do you use the handy online banking app on your smartphone? What network is your smartphone connected to? Is the app accessing the internet through an unsecured public Wi-Fi connection in an airport café or on the back of the bus? If so, the chances of accidentally committing an insecure transaction have increased. To prevent this, the advice is to always conduct financial transactions at home, on a network you trust. If you must access a computer or your bank’s online services on the move, then make sure each website you visit has “https://” at the beginning of the web address, as the “s” in this arrangement stands for “secure”. Obviously.
Also, Double check with your bank if you’re worried about what you’ve just done – the other part of security is making sure you’re aware what’s coming out of your account and when. For example, you could be charged twice for booking a hotel online, for example, because your pressed refresh while waiting for a confirmation page to load. And though it’s not the hotel’s fault, mistakes like that could mean a tedious exchange of phone calls to get remedied, especially if you don’t realise they happened until months afterwards.
Nerd alert: If you do conduct your financial business from your home computer, make sure it’s tooled up with all the usual anti-spyware, anti-virus software, the browser is – crucially – updated to the latest version and your operating system’s firewall is switched on. Make sure you keep the anti-spyware and anti-virus files automatically updated, as those who practice the dark arts of identity theft and other nefarious practices are constantly inventing ways to trick old, out-of-date software into thinking viruses are benign, when in fact they may be sitting on your computer right now learning your passwords and remembering your online PIN numbers.
Despite this, it really shouldn’t be daunting to shop or bank online – follow the readily available and straightforward advice, and above all practice common sense. If you get an email saying you need to log into your ISA immediately or else, then take it with an enormous pinch of salt and check with your bank or other service provider first.
One last piece of advice, again it’s stating the somewhat obvious but make sure the website you are on is the one you’re supposed to be on – don’t follow links or pop-up ads to get to where you need to be. Instead, find your internet banking screen and add it to your favourites, that way you’ll avoid being accidentally taken to a scam site that may look like your bank’s website but in fact isn’t.
Stay safe out there!
Blog post originally written for Fair Go Finance and appeared on their website in 2015.
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