Im just curious what everyone elses views are on security in terms of banking and online banking etc.

To what extent are you cautious in protecting your details?

The rest of my family wont do online banking, and shred any and all documents.

Maybe Im a little lazy, but I love internet banking, but am wondering if Im starting to get a bit more cautious. For starters I was a bit surprised by eggs limited security in terms of logging in, compared to barclays which requires a hardware cardreader to identify yourself to log in as well as perform certain actions. Santander has got a system of sending a text confirmation number for the same actions.

What Im getting to though is phone confirmations. The stupidest thing I have encountered so far, but I dont get how they can get around it much, is again with egg, where you either get an automated phone message, or a person, asking you to confirm recent purchases. It always throws me off as copying it would be such an easy way to obtain passwords. The automated system asked for DOB, which isnt too bad, but I can envision a system where it rings up a few times over a week or two, asking for different things, and then hey presto, someone has your security details. Today I had a person asking to confirm the purchases, but after the DOB she also asked a few other questions which are included in the log in process. At least they point out that if youre unhappy with providing the info, you can call the number on the back of the card, which I did, and it was legit. Its not like phishing emails though, where you can see if a link is dodgy, Im surprised fake phone calls arent more common.

Thoughts?  

Most recent lesson learned - using online banking from an untrusted machine is dodge - had to use a dodgy hotel laptop in Valencia which was compromised and only avoided losing money from my account through luck rather than judgement.

Frustrating thing is that the exploit made the online banking behave in a way it never should in normal operation - if Natwest explained this on the login page thered be a lot less people getting ripped off.

Which transactions do you need to use your card reader for? Agreed theyre annoying but for most things you dont use them on Natwest - only things like e.g. adding new payees.

i can log in without it, but need it to transfer money

^^^  

that would be much better !!!


it won;t even let my pay my credit card which is with the same bank !

Sounds like its time for a new bank to me! Even though people never actually seem to do that...

I would.... but they always have short queues.... and actually serve you as fast as they can.... if theyre busy the manager goes behind the desk and helps etc...


drives me crazy waiting in the queue at the bank for 10min while the halfwits behind the counter take there time and drive every transaction out... its just bad manners, at work as soon as a customer comes in, someone goes to serve them, if you come in and someone is already being served someone else will stop working and come out to serve you, if youre the 3rd person there someone else will stop what theyre doing to come serve you.... and if I need to get something from the other freezer I run !

You mean very hard or very easy? ( I cant tell if your perl script is easy or hard!)

The mother of a friend of mine was conned this week by a person (with a subcontinent accent) ringing her up and purporting to be a Sky agent and saying there was something wrong with her broadband. They then proceeded to extract her card and bank details! Maybe the elderly are more vulnerable but needless to say my friend went through her like a dose of salts, rang the police, cut up the cards etc.
Personally I dont bank online as it would just be another thing to worry about, though I do do telephone banking.

You mean very hard or very easy? ( I cant tell if your perl script is easy or hard!)

The mother of a friend of mine was conned this week by a person (with a subcontinent accent) ringing her up and purporting to be a Sky agent and saying there was something wrong with her broadband. They then proceeded to extract her card and bank details! Maybe the elderly are more vulnerable but needless to say my friend went through her like a dose of salts, rang the police, cut up the cards etc.
Personally I dont bank online as it would just be another thing to worry about, though I do do telephone banking.

Out of interest would you answer security questions if you were called by the bank, or would you always take the option to ring them back to be safe?