Keeping Your Online Bank Accounts Safe

by Charlotte Wood
(last updated February 21, 2009)

4

In a world rife with ever-advancing technology and where information rather than brawn is power, you need to keep an extra eye on your money and your personal information. Almost everything now is stored in a computer on a hard drive somewhere: your name, address, family members, employment information, schooling information, and even your financial transactions and activities can be found through computers. With online banking becoming more and more popular and widely used, extra precautions need to be taken to insure that your information and money stays safe.

You always have the option of having online banking. If online banking comes automatically with your account and you wish to not have that information on the internet, your bank can remove it per your request. With that said, remember that you do choose to have online banking and to have that information on a potentially unsafe system so you take a risk by simply having your accounts online in the first place. Coinciding with this upsurge in internet usage and ease, there are multiple effective ways in which you can protect your computer and your online information from the lurking, unscrupulous cyber thieves.

Always access your information on a secure network. If your network is unsecured then you risk anyone being able to hack into your files and access all kinds of information. If you make sure your internet connections are secure and stable, then you already reduce the risk of losing control of your personal and financial information.

Especially with online banking and all that you can do with your money from your simple home computer, you need to monitor your accounts. Keep track of your balance and your activity in a check register and make sure your records coincide with what the Internet says. If there's anything suspicious or not right, you need to contact your bank and take the necessary steps to research the problem and then gain back control of your accounts. If you know what should be going in and out of your account then it shouldn't be hard to quickly spot a problem. Your bank also has your financial concerns and well being in their best interests so you should utilize their help and support when making your way through a sticky situation.

Online banking is a great tool and one that continues to revolutionize the way we do business and control our money, but it does come with a risk. If you can simply take the steps to insure that your information is secure and if you keep up on your account activity, then you should be able to keep your money and information safe and private.

Author Bio

Charlotte Wood

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Comments

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What is 2 + 8?

2020-04-06 16:36:30

Tomek Dluzniewski

When using AutoCorrect You can select your own “Replace” sequence of characters for each Character-with-Diacritical-Mark, just make sure it is not something likely to be part of the text. One suggestion may be “:a” for ä and “:aa” for Ä. As there is no space after colon it is not very likely to be required in normal text. Other combinations could be !a, !:a, or ::a.

Unluckily this character sequence does not get AutoCorrected until you press a delimiter character after it (space, period, comma, parenthesis, etc.) This delimiting character will also stay in the text and you will have to backspace over it if you accented character is not the last in the word. In MS Word, you can use the delimiting character (except space) as the last one in your “replace” sequence and it will not remain after auto correct action; not so in Excel.


2020-04-06 16:26:15

Tomek Dluzniewski

Jim, some laptops do not have the option to use a substitute numeric keypad even with Fn key pressed. My previous laptop did, if I remember, Fn+ F, Fn+G, Fn+H were equivalent to numeric pad 4, 5, 6 respectively. For the one I have now I would have to remap my keyboard.
I am just posting this so that people who have laptops without such functionality do not get confused.
Just for clarity: Fn is not one of F1-F12 function keys, just another key like Shift, Ctrl, and Alt.


2020-04-04 08:56:14

John Mann

I'm a bit puzzled by Jim's reference to the F11 key. On my laptop it creates a chart sheet.

I've always undeerstood that using ALT + code requires the numeric code to by typed on the numeric keypad, not the usual number row on the main keyboard (typewriter style numbers).

My laytops have all had a numeric keypad - I won't buy one that doesn't. If for some reason I did need ot get a unit with no numeric pad, I would thne be buying a separate numeric pad to connect to my computer. I very rarely use the typewriter style numbers - sometimes for things like Canadian Post codes or numbers and a street address.


2020-04-04 06:47:05

Jim

Also, for those of us using a laptop, for entering Alt Codes, you need to use the numbers with the Fn Key. Not the row under the F1-F12 keys. These numbers shown on the keyboard alphabet. (Mine are red).