How secure is online banking
How secure online banking is depends very much on how carefully you do it. You should definitely take some safety precautions. This will help you minimize the risk of unauthorized access to your account.
Online banking - as secure as you do it
- Go to your bank's website and check the address field first. There should be a secure connection, i.e. a current security certificate must be stored. You can recognize this by the fact that the URL begins with "https".
- If the security certificate has expired, you should not use this page for online banking.
- In addition, you should never access your bank's website via links in an email. It could be phishing. We will explain how you can recognize phishing emails and how you can protect yourself from phishing in further articles.
- When choosing your password, you should be particularly careful when accessing your bank online.
- If you are securely logged in, you must use TANs for your transactions. The mTAN process is the safest variant. You will always receive the latest TAN as an SMS on your cell phone. Alternatives to mTAN are chipTAN, pushTAN and photoTAN.
- You should not use online banking without security measures on your own PC. This includes an activated firewall and an effective antivirus. For your security, you will find numerous free tools, such as Avira Antivir. Stiftung Warentest has also tested and rated virus protection software.
- Despite everything, online banking always harbors a residual risk that criminals will crack your account. In this case, you should definitely set an account limit when using online banking, as the damage is at least limited if unauthorized access should occur.
Evidence is also available for online banking. How long you should keep bank statements and what you need to consider is explained in the next article.