Q: I take in so much about hackers attacking Web sites and stealing people’s personal data. Is it safe to bank online?

A: One of the scariest things about banking online is that you’re forced to enter personal info, like detail numbers, that you’d never type anywhere else on the World Wide Web. You’re plus viewing your most sensitive financial knowledge, and the fear is whether you can see it, a skillful hacker might as well.

Getting by that hurdle takes faith in the defense of your computer and the banking Web site, but the most paranoid humans in the world — computer defense experts — say it’s absolutely fine to bank online. As distant as you guard against the person who is likely your biggest adversary: yourself.

Hackers are certainly targeting banking sites, but it’s a hard job. They prefer a much easier way to idiot citizens into coughing up their personal info: hoax spam. urls in those messages direct you to sites that look and feel like valid banking sites, but whether you enter your history details into them, the knowledge vanishes into the criminals’ clutches.

whether you’re banking online, your top priority should be avoid these “phishing” e-mails. They led to an estimated $3.2 billion in consumer losses in 2007, according to Gartner Inc.

Avoiding them is simple: don’t visit on any urls in e-mails sent to you purporting to be from your bank. Open up a separate window in your browser and navigate to the banking site on your own. That’s critical to making certain you’re visiting the authentic site, and will hugely cut your risk of getting hacked.

You plus have to be careful about where you surf on the Web when you’re not banking. Viruses you catch elsewhere can hide silently inside your computer only to activate once you enter info into specific…

[Source] dhiram