Internet banks, are they safe?

fisher-man_2

Hi,
How safe are internet banks such as ICICI and First Direct etc?

Does anybody know of any cases where somebody has had their account hacked and lost their money? Does it happen?

BenL

Most banks with an internet channel have fraud guarantees, these however rely on you to be responsible with your passwords and take due care to look after them.

The banks systems are mainly highly secure.

The main issue is with the user, phishing e-mails - where a fake e-mail comes through pretending to be from your bank trying to trick you into giving out your details.

The banks servers treat every connection like its a hack until you put in your credentials and they are verfied.

There are several layers of security after that. The website itself should be secured and encrypted to 128bit security - similar to military (but the military will probably have moved on since then)

It's never happened to me (touch wood) but the banks may take a hard line and the terms and cons will be stacked towards you proving you looked after the passwords and it wasn't you doing the transactions if it happened.

Ben

nilrem_2

I am not 100% sure that I would go with ICICI TBH but most of the others that are covered by the FSA are pretty damn safe IMHO.

I have online accounts with several INC Icesave, Smile and NatWest and have had no problems to date.

AFAIAC online banking is as safe or safer than phone banking and much better than having to visit a branch.

Just take all the usual sensible online precautions and ignore any emails you might get purporting to come from the bank, suggesting that you need to log on to reset your account!