Tuesday, 5 October 2010

Online Banking

    Online banking is a internet accessed way to your bank account allowing one to check balances, transfer between accounts and launch international wires from anywhere in the world. From this, loans and mortgages cane be granted as well as managing personal details. These purposes are formed for all banks, and I plan to focus on both ‘Halifax’ and ‘NatWest’ in particular.

    Online banking is an industry used by pretty much any high street bank chain, providing people with wide spread access about them and their banking experience. What people intend to do with it is entirely up to them, with a range of programs that isn’t just targeted at one subject audience, however any one owning and possessing a bank card.
    Therefore online banking can be used by anyone, providing people with an up to date check of the details, including balance and transactions payments, just through login. This overwhelms high street banking with queuing and access to information also being a major problem throughout the countries systems.

    Security is the main concern for people through the idea of online banking. With millions of people now preferring this to normal banking, so have public ‘scams’, with more and more people now trying to  corrupt people’s security to access vital funds. The idea of people having their money stolen or accessed has feared many people, and without these upcoming security checks, online banking to many would be a ‘no go area’.
A number of fake web pages are designed made to look exactly like that one of the banks. From here, emails are sent with links to these sites, telling these people to update their current information, which means logging in vital account details that are then saved and made to hack and clear out.
    However, with this rise of online theft, so has the rise of security, with many banks now possessing security questions that hopefully only the client should know. In conjunction to this, Halifax and NatWest these both have the security of the customer as priority.
    NatWest have gone one further than anybody else, and have provided a system called ‘Rapport security check, which enables customers a chance to do online banking securely, with regular scans and checks of your finances for any intrusion or irregular behaviour. If anything is thought to be happening, the bank is there to contact you, where guidelines and support will be laid down for you. As well as this, phishing emails information is available to you, where you can access details on how to know when it’s a real email and when it isn’t. This varies from the definition of phishing, right through to what to identify from wording to sophisticated language.




    Halifax have also kept their customers secure with a section on security questions. These are question specifically about the customers themselves, allowing them to disclose answers to questions that only they should know. However, these questions have been known to have been too simple and through this, have created something called ‘memorable information’. This involves having a word involving both letters and numbers. This acts as a password, however rather than being asked for the secret word as a whole, they would ask for 3 of the characters, which are randomly selected. This adds a constant array of security with the hackers having to get past 2 sets of question in order to technically steal your ‘identity’.


   

    The transaction of payment is another problem across modern day shopping, with a banks spending and loaning of money playing a major part of this. People fear that they will not get their end of the bargain, and through this are anxious of where the money might go. With his in mind people tend to use other forms of transaction, with websites like Paypal.com and Google checkout being these. From this, online banking is helped and can provide people with an incentive to join and experience, with PayPal being the only ones able to access your bank  account and not that of a complete stranger.
    PayPal is often used through auction sites like eBay, where identity fraud and consumer declaration laws are broken on a daily basis. This helps both sides of the transaction have their product/money, with the aid of one side not feeling they got ripped off or scammed. In relation to Halifax and NatWest, both of these yes use these sites, and rain nothing but the praise for them, with each explaining how these sort of operations have only helped the growth of online banking.







No comments:

Post a Comment