Online Banking Security: Taking A Look At Phishing Scams And How To Prevent Them

Finance & Money Articles

Being able to access your banking information online at home without having to go to the bank is an incredibly attractive service that has captivated approximately 51% of U.S. adults and online banking makes this possible. Although online banking services are convenient, they are susceptible to fraudulent activities. In particular, many Americans fall victim to phishing scams. This article will explore what phishing scams are, how you can actively prevent yourself from becoming a victim.

What Are Phishing Scams?

Phishing is better classified as a type of online identity theft. This scam uses emails and fraudulent websites to trick bank clients into divulging their own account information. Once the account information is provided, the con artists has access to and can steal your personal information, including credit card numbers, passwords, account data and more.

The con artists will send fraudulent emails to just about any email they can get ahold of with a link to a fraudulent website. Most of the time, these emails will claim something has happened to your account, and you will need to sign into your account to verify your account information once again.

45% of bank customers that do open the email and click on the link to the website will submit their login information to the phishing site. In total, approximately 0.47% of a bank's customer will fall victim to phishing scams each year. Although this may not seem like a large number, it accounts for $2.4 to $9.4 million in fraud losses each year.

How Can You Prevent Yourself From Being Scammed?

To prevent yourself from becoming a part of that statistic, be wary when receiving any type of emails from your bank. Banks will never ask you to divulge account information or ask that you verify any information. If a bank does require you to verify banking information, it will usually request that you make an appointment with a financial advisor and physically go down to your local branch. Because of this, you can easily prevent yourself from being scammed by:

• not entering any personal or financial information that comes from pop-up windows. Instead, you should type the website address of your bank directly into your browser and access your account from there;
• checking the site's security certificate before entering any personal or financial information. All banks are required to encrypt their site using a security certificate. You can check the site's security certificate by clicking on the padlock icon beside the address if you are using Internet Explorer or Firefox or by looking for the certificate feature in the menu option within the page information or source;
• not clicking on any links regarding your bank that are in your emails. Once again, it's better to access your bank's website directly by typing the address into your browser;
• keeping your computer's security system and software current by updating it regularly; and,
• setting your email settings appropriately, so that the email provider can weed out any suspicious emails that are sent to you and place them directly in the spam or junk folder.

Conclusion

The emails involved in phishing scams often look very authentic. The content of these emails are not composed professionally, and the emails also adorn the bank's logo and other information. Since it is difficult to determine the legitimacy of an email, make sure to protect your own personal information like a hawk. Only divulge account details if you are speaking to a financial advisor at your local branch or if you have typed the website address of the bank directly into your browser. It's always better to be safe than sorry in these situations. 

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11 September 2015