Budgeting, planning and all the good credit habits in the world are no good if someone goes and nicks your hard-earned money. These days, though, the bad guys are unlikely to turn up with stockings over their heads and big sacks marked “swag”. Digital crime – money being stolen directly from your bank account – is on the up.

There are two ways this can happen, and one is a lot more common than the other.

“Hacking” is what most of us think of when we imagine money being nicked from our bank account (or what we blame when our Facebook account suddenly starts posting amazing deals on Oakley sunglasses). Real hacking though – someone sitting down and going all out to bypass your bank’s security systems just to get at your grocery money – is pretty rare. It’s hard, it takes time, and crooks are lazy.

“Phishing,” on the other hand, is a lot more common. And that’s where underpants come into it.

Phishing relies on what computer security people call social engineering. Instead of writing some clever code or virus, a phishing attack typically uses something simple like an email or a Facebook message to lead you down a path that ends in you sharing your bank login details with the bad guys.

The messages and emails can look pretty convincing, and before you know it you’re at what looks like a banking login page, giving the keys to your virtual vault to who-knows-who.

Give away that password, and you haven’t been burgled: you’ve left the front door open and told the crooks which mattress the money is under.

Your best protection? Treat your banking passwords like your underpants.

Change them often
OK, we’re not suggesting you change your password every single day (or more often, if you’ve been for a run). But a password that hasn’t changed since you opened the account is hack-cident waiting to happen. If keeping track of ever-changing passwords is a hassle, you could always try a reputable password management app.

Don’t share them
Underpants are personal and so are banking passwords. So no matter how much you trust someone, don’t ever share your password with them. That goes for your bank, too! The only place a bank will ever ask for your password is when you’re logging in to online banking. And they’ll never link you to a log-in page via an email or Facebook message. (Bonus tip: same goes for your credit and EFTPOS card PIN!)

Don’t leave them lying around
You wouldn’t leave your undies on the desk at work, or stuck to the fridge door at home (well we really hope you wouldn’t). Same deal with your banking password. Writing it down is risky enough. If that’s the only way you can remember it, though, put it somewhere no one will think to look – and don’t make it obvious what it is.

The post Want to keep your money safe online? Think about your underpants appeared first on Credit Simple.

Once upon a time bank robbers needed guns and balaclavas. Today a mouse and keyboard can be more dangerous. Every year too many Aussies are defrauded by cyber criminals, resulting in annual losses of more than $2b, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology.

One common fraud method is ‘phishing’, where the victim clicks on what looks like a genuine email from a company such as their bank, an online trading site, or another organisation. Except that it’s not their bank, and their keystrokes are captured revealing their username and password. The phisher then logs into the genuine bank account doing what’s called an ‘account takeover’ and helps themselves to your money.

Fortunately there’s money in security, and as the fraudsters get cleverer so too are the programmers working for good developing increasingly sophisticated technology to thwart criminals.

Here’s a taster of what the fields of biometrics, artificial intelligence, and computer science are doing to help protect us against increasingly clever cyber-attacks.

Big data and analytics

Back in the day banks were very manual and their information was siloed, but they accept that they need to move forward to counter fraudsters. These days banks and financial institutions are learning to manage and analyse terabytes of historical and third-party data in real time. Combined with other technologies, this analysis of big data can often spot a fraudster in action and  may be able to stop them in their tracks.

Biometric authentication

Biometrics uses statistical analysis of online behaviour to authenticate customers. In short, the software analyses things such as the speed and rhythm of your keystrokes and mouse use online. A fraudster will have a different rhythm and with the right software can be prevented from emptying your bank account before any damage is done. Companies offering this type of technology include BioCatch and Behaviosec, which can pick up anomalies in data entry patterns. These systems can mutate as threats change.

360 degree view

Think of this as a holistic approach to protecting you. As banks evolve for the digital world they can access a 360-degree view of your buying behaviour, banking operation, and trading patterns providing them with a holistic view of your behaviour. If, for example a clone of your card is being used in Argentina in an unusual way, the transaction could be flagged very accurately by sophisticated software. Currently there are a lot of false positives with this approach, but it is improving rapidly.

Blockchain

Have you heard of Bitcoin? It’s electronic currency that aims to be super secure. Don’t try to get your head around that in one go. But suffice to say that the ‘blockchain’ technology behind it can help protect banks against hacks. Blockchain is a huge decentralised database that’s much more secure than old banking systems because fraudsters would have to hack into every single computer containing copies of the same data to get your money. As organisations such as banks move to using blockchain, you’ll hopefully get better protection.

Fingerprint recognition

The password is dying and methods of fingerprint and other identification such as voice, face and irises are expected to become more common. Banks are already using some of this technology in Australia.  As well as fingerprints, face, eyeball selfie, or voice recognition can be used instead of passwords. In the future you can expect to use your fingerprint to authorise purchases or transactions. It’s not failsafe, however and even your fingerprint can be hacked.

As a consumer you also need to play your part in preventing fraud by everything from avoiding clicking on unsolicited emails, using secure PINs, changing passwords periodically, never revealing your PIN to anyone, and just keeping your wits about you.

The post Fighting fraud: How biometrics and artificial intelligence are helping to keep you safe online appeared first on Credit Simple.

I’m not who you think I am.

Sure, you probably don’t think of me at all, which is fine (I won’t judge you for it) but what surprised me is I’m not who I thought I was either.

I got an email from a guy out of the blue asking me if I was investing in a ceramics factory in Thailand. A curious opening gambit, for sure, but having checked my portfolio and discussed matters with my business manager (Me: “Honey, do we have any investments in ceramics?” Wife: Snort) I replied that no, as far as I could tell I did not and what on earth was he asking for.

It turns out he has lots of money and was approached about an investment in said ceramics factory and as a way of enticing him in further, was provided with three email addresses for people who had already invested. Being a canny fellow, he checked up on each “investor”, of which I apparently was one, and decided to contact us directly rather than through the addresses he was given, all of which turned out to be some Thai equivalent of Hotmail.

After we chatted I realised just how easy it is to pretend to be someone else online.

Identity is very important to a lot of people because we have to be able to prove we are who we say we are for all kinds of reasons. Travel, insurance, finance, health care, driving, registering your dog and even paying taxes – it all relies utterly on us being able to prove we are who we say we are. Yet in this age of social media sharing we forget just how important it is to safeguard this information.

A friend of mine recently discovered someone else had set up a Facebook page in her name and was chatting merrily away with all her university buddies and generally building up quite a history of being her on Facebook (something she herself doesn’t use). Proving that she was the real her was rather time consuming and not a little alarming. Facebook has a process for this sort of thing. They have a process because it happens all the time. Constantly. Right now someone is out there pretending to be someone else and generally speaking I’m going to go out on a limb and say they’re doing it for nefarious reasons.

A lot of people just aren’t bothered by this. I’ve got nothing to hide, they say, and if you search online for images of “new credit card” you’ll find plenty of people who will happily take a selfie with their new card, complete with all the information you need to go shopping on their behalf.

But you need to think about what information you’re putting out there, and what information other people are sharing about you.

There are three pieces of identifying information that we’re regularly asked for that you really want to keep to yourself or at least only use when you’re connecting with something important like the bank or the government or indeed your credit rating. Don’t use them for social media questions and really think twice before you share them in public.

The first is your mother’s maiden name. Don’t use it as a user name or password and don’t use it as a secret question/answer thing for sites with rubbish security. Keep it for websites you know are legit.

Speaking of which, the second thing is your tax number. This is more prevalent in the US where you’re asked for your “social security number” more for tax purposes but it’s starting to be used here as well. Don’t use this for anything but connecting with the tax office.

The last one is the boring one – your date of birth. Everybody wants your DOB so they can send you electronic bouquets of flowers and get everyone excited for you, but again it’s a detail that is best kept to yourself.

If you figure out a person’s date of birth, their mother’s maiden name and where they live you’re on your way to being able to set up new accounts, order credit cards, buy stuff online and all the rest and that’s not an easy rabbit hole to get out of.

Online security doesn’t have to be about not going online. It doesn’t have to be about avoiding social media and not doing any of those quizzes that tell you what kind of dog you’re best suited to. But you do need to consider what information you’re giving out and whether the person or service you’re giving it to really needs to know that about you.

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