http://www.greenpandatreehouse.com/2008/04/11/does-your-bank-care-about-online-banking-security/ Working Student’s View of Personal Finance and Frugal Living Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:17:27 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 http://www.greenpandatreehouse.com/2008/04/11/does-your-bank-care-about-online-banking-security/#comment-1738 Jake Stichler Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:54:37 +0000 http://www.greenpandatreehouse.com/?p=200#comment-1738 Here's a fun story: There's a local bank around here that I am not a customer of. My credit union referred me to them for a service that the CU couldn't provide. At the time, I was still using one of my domain names for email, and I always used unique email addresses for every website (as everything came to the same box) in an effort to track where I'm getting spam from. So, I contacted this bank twice using their online form, and using the email alias' lvfb@ and lvfb2@. They were, of course, able to provide me with the service requested, free of charge. However, wouldn't you know, months later, I got a few phishing emails for their parent bank to those email addresses. I contacted them immediately, and they said they were aware of the problem, as other customers had gotten the same emails. They then of course recommended actions *I* should take to secure *my* computer. However, I may as well have been talking to a wall when I tried to explain to them several times that the information was somehow being intercepted on their end, NOT mine, due to the fact that I am not a customer of theirs or their parent bank. The only parties that should have known my email addresses used in correspondence between the bank and I, are the bank and I. They just didn't seem to understand that someone could have gotten my email from them and not from me. Oh well, conclusion: Don't use that bank for anything if they can't even handle keeping my email address secure. Here’s a fun story: There’s a local bank around here that I am not a customer of. My credit union referred me to them for a service that the CU couldn’t provide. At the time, I was still using one of my domain names for email, and I always used unique email addresses for every website (as everything came to the same box) in an effort to track where I’m getting spam from. So, I contacted this bank twice using their online form, and using the email alias’ lvfb@ and lvfb2@. They were, of course, able to provide me with the service requested, free of charge. However, wouldn’t you know, months later, I got a few phishing emails for their parent bank to those email addresses. I contacted them immediately, and they said they were aware of the problem, as other customers had gotten the same emails. They then of course recommended actions *I* should take to secure *my* computer. However, I may as well have been talking to a wall when I tried to explain to them several times that the information was somehow being intercepted on their end, NOT mine, due to the fact that I am not a customer of theirs or their parent bank. The only parties that should have known my email addresses used in correspondence between the bank and I, are the bank and I. They just didn’t seem to understand that someone could have gotten my email from them and not from me. Oh well, conclusion: Don’t use that bank for anything if they can’t even handle keeping my email address secure.

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