Is safe online banking possible? sandbox?

Ken Blake wrote:


I think Wolf only visits restaurants that bring a WiFi terminal to the
table, but I never think to ask about that before they show me to my table.

In my experience, such a restaurant is rare in the USA, but they are
very common in France and Italy, maybe in other countries in Europe
too.

In the US, the only restaurant I've seen with such gizmos is Uno's. No
place else.

--
Tim Slattery
tim at risingdove dot com

On 4/10/2015 4:17 PM, Tim Slattery wrote:
Ken Blake wrote:


I think Wolf only visits restaurants that bring a WiFi terminal to the
table, but I never think to ask about that before they show me to my table.

In my experience, such a restaurant is rare in the USA, but they are
very common in France and Italy, maybe in other countries in Europe
too.

In the US, the only restaurant I've seen with such gizmos is Uno's. No
place else.

In the US? You've been to how many?

I was at one a few minutes ago that supplies Wi-Fi. I've seen more
than I can count or even remember. This particular place is one of the
smallest establishments anywhere. Has about 8 booths.

There are plenty of "gizmos" in my area.

On 4/10/2015 2:42 AM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Thu, 09 Apr 2015 17:10:09 -0400, Wolf K wrote:

On 2015-04-09 4:11 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Thu, 9 Apr 2015 11:31:15 -0700, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Thu, 09 Apr 2015 10:06:37 -0500, Char Jackson wrote:

On Thu, 09 Apr 2015 08:57:03 -0400, Wolf K wrote:

On 2015-04-09 12:00 AM, Paul in Houston TX wrote:
mike wrote:
Can you do safe online banking in win7?

Online banking is unsafe by virtue of it being online.
I do all my banking at the bank.

+1

-1

The same folks who are afraid to bank online will hand their credit card to
a teenager at a restaurant and watch him walk away with it.

Or to an adult, for that matter...

I think Wolf only visits restaurants that bring a WiFi terminal to the
table, but I never think to ask about that before they show me to my table.

I've come to expect this. Very few restaurants without them. Even if you
go up to the counter, you will usually be handed a wi-fi card terminal.

I want to say that I've experienced a "pay at the table" scenario down here
in the States, but I'm not sure that I've seen such a thing. You guys are
apparently ahead of us in this area.

I see more places that have Ipads in place of a cash register. That
means Wi-Fi-ing your card into their system.

Anyone that is simply afraid to do online banking is simply afraid for
no good reason. If it wasn't secure then it would have died a long time
ago.

Does anyone have ONE example to offer up?

My insurance company was hacked gaining info including S.S number, how
much I make and much more and you guys are scared to do online banking.

Sorry if I laugh.

On Fri, 10 Apr 2015 16:50:10 -0400, Al Drake wrote:

On 4/10/2015 4:17 PM, Tim Slattery wrote:
Ken Blake wrote:


I think Wolf only visits restaurants that bring a WiFi terminal to the
table, but I never think to ask about that before they show me to my table.

In my experience, such a restaurant is rare in the USA, but they are
very common in France and Italy, maybe in other countries in Europe
too.

In the US, the only restaurant I've seen with such gizmos is Uno's. No
place else.

In the US? You've been to how many?

I was at one a few minutes ago that supplies Wi-Fi. I've seen more
than I can count or even remember. This particular place is one of the
smallest establishments anywhere. Has about 8 booths.

There are plenty of "gizmos" in my area.

Are we still talking about the same thing? The gizmo being discussed is a
method to pay for your meal by swiping a credit card at the table, versus
watching the waiter/waitress walk away with your credit card and disappear
in the back for a few minutes.

--

Char Jackson

On 4/9/2015 2:52 PM, s|b wrote:
On Wed, 08 Apr 2015 23:00:54 -0500, Paul in Houston TX wrote:

Online banking is unsafe by virtue of it being online.
I do all my banking at the bank.

Good for you! I do most of my online banking at home, in a comfy chair;
sometimes I use the "Self Service Banking" terminals at the bank and
those are probably running Windows XP, so... safe?

Anyway, as a Belgian citizen the bank is obligated by law to refund me
when something goes wrong (phishing for example). Even if I'm running XP
or don't have any antivirus. If I'm not mistaken

But I guess, the m.o. is pretty safe. One bank uses a VASCO card reader
that can either be connected or not.

https://www.vasco.com/products/client_products/card_reader_digipass/digipass_870.aspx

The amount/sum of money you transfer is also part of the code and, of
course, you need a bank card and the PIN code.

For some reason, I don't trust their Android app much, but I haven't
given it a chance yet. But it should have the same insurance, so there's
really no reason not to use it...


+1

Referring to security, I wonder how many posters have supplied their
S.S. number when asked by Comcast and other providers of other services.

How about their driver's license with your name and address.

The presumption of security and privacy is comical.

Someone pays by check that has the bank routing and account number
right on the front?

On Fri, 10 Apr 2015 16:57:51 -0400, Al Drake wrote:

On 4/10/2015 2:42 AM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Thu, 09 Apr 2015 17:10:09 -0400, Wolf K wrote:

On 2015-04-09 4:11 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Thu, 9 Apr 2015 11:31:15 -0700, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Thu, 09 Apr 2015 10:06:37 -0500, Char Jackson wrote:

On Thu, 09 Apr 2015 08:57:03 -0400, Wolf K wrote:

On 2015-04-09 12:00 AM, Paul in Houston TX wrote:
mike wrote:
Can you do safe online banking in win7?

Online banking is unsafe by virtue of it being online.
I do all my banking at the bank.

+1

-1

The same folks who are afraid to bank online will hand their credit card to
a teenager at a restaurant and watch him walk away with it.

Or to an adult, for that matter...

I think Wolf only visits restaurants that bring a WiFi terminal to the
table, but I never think to ask about that before they show me to my table.

I've come to expect this. Very few restaurants without them. Even if you
go up to the counter, you will usually be handed a wi-fi card terminal.

I want to say that I've experienced a "pay at the table" scenario down here
in the States, but I'm not sure that I've seen such a thing. You guys are
apparently ahead of us in this area.

I see more places that have Ipads in place of a cash register. That
means Wi-Fi-ing your card into their system.

Anyone that is simply afraid to do online banking is simply afraid for
no good reason. If it wasn't secure then it would have died a long time
ago.

Does anyone have ONE example to offer up?

My insurance company was hacked gaining info including S.S number, how
much I make and much more and you guys are scared to do online banking.

Sorry if I laugh.


Don't say "you guys" when you're replying to one of my posts. :-)

I'm the one who said I stopped going to banks in 1984. I'm quite deep into
electronic banking and don't consider it to be any more risky than
non-electronic banking. The specific risks are different, but the overall
risk level is surely no worse and quite possibly better for electronic
banking. IMHO, of course.


--

Char Jackson

On 4/9/2015 4:26 AM, Bob Henson wrote:
On 09/04/2015 2:20 am, mike wrote:
Can you do safe online banking in win7?

As safe as, or safer than, any other way, yes. Safer than wandering
through the streets to and from the bank carrying cash. Our paranoia is
often excessive - people go to enormous lengths to protect their bank
account details, and then write cheques (or used to) for people with all
their bank details printed on. The only thing that needs protecting is
your passwords. The transactions take place in an encrypted tunnel. If
you are widely known to be a multi-millionaire, you might (only might)
find someone lurking outside your house 24/7 with a van load of
equipment trying to hack into your calls. They are still extremely
unlikely to succeed. Are you a well-known multimillionaire? No? Then
forget the problem.

If my computer already has malware, such as a keylogger,
the sandbox won't help me at all to prevent my
account info being logged and sent off to the hackers.
Yes? No?

Typing in passwords is one area where there may be a real risk from
keyloggers. So, don't use the keyboard. Fill secure forms in with data
saved (encrypted) in RoboForm or LastPass and pasted in automatically.
Keyloggers wouldn't really work with my bank because you never type your
whole password. It requires a log-in. Mine is long and complicated - if
you are paranoid about burglars breaking in to your house and using your
computer don't tell it to remember your log-in). The Bank then requires
a random sequence of several characters from a password (mine is long
and complex). Even if anyone is listening in, it will take them a hell
of a long time to work out which letters are which even if they knew how
long the password was. In the almost impossible event of them doing so,
there is then another sequence of characters from a second PIN for them
to crack. Some banks require you to generate a pin from a separate
dongle gadget. Others recommend Rapport software, as extra protection (I
don't bother - it slows up the system and occasionally has bugs) Am I
painting the right picture? It is very, very safe.

Is your computer stealthed? If it is behind a NAT router correctly set
up, you are invisible to the internet, especially if you have a
dynamically allocated IP address. To test try Gibson Research:-

https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

If you are stealthed and you don't let anything on to your system (good
antivirus, don't open attachments. etc) they can't find you anyway.

Others may give you advanced technical reasons why it online banking may
be unsafe - but what I'm saying is that the probability is very, very
low if you are sensible, and for all but the aforementioned millionaire
it isn't worth worrying about. You money is much more likely to be
nicked internally by a bank employee than a hacker.


excellent post. Thank you very much.

On Fri, 10 Apr 2015 14:48:26 -0500, Char Jackson wrote:

On Fri, 10 Apr 2015 11:46:16 -0700, "Gene E. Bloch"
wrote:

On Fri, 10 Apr 2015 01:14:53 -0500, Char Jackson wrote:

On Fri, 10 Apr 2015 03:16:27 +0000 (UTC), Roger Blake
wrote:

On 2015-04-09, Char Jackson wrote:
The same folks who are afraid to bank online will hand their credit card to
a teenager at a restaurant and watch him walk away with it.

Nope. I pay cash at restaurants, as I do for all purchases at
"brick and mortar" stores.

I have no problem with people who still use cash. Sure, I look on in
amusement, but it's only amusement. The people who really annoy me,
especially when the lines are long, are the folks who dig around and
eventually produce a checkbook. Five minutes later (exaggerating) they hand
a check to the cashier. Meanwhile, I'm looking around for a shorter line.

Are you sure that you're exaggerating?

I once saw a lady pull a puppy out of her purse when she was having trouble
finding her checkbook. Another time, a young lady (I was young then, too)
burst into tears after searching for some way to pay for her baby's diapers
and food. Apparently, she'd forgotten both her wallet and her checkbook, so
in the spirit of doing something nice for once in my life, I paid her bill
and a couple of weeks later she sent me a check.

Hilarious!

Been there, hated that...

Another favorite of mine is the person who takes that same five minutes
to produce his iPhone or Android phone, search around for the app, touch
some icon, swear, touch another icon, enter a PIN, and finally pay for
his $2 coffee.

I'm seeing that more and more when people are being asked to produce their
airline boarding pass. Fumble for the phone, exit Facebook, launch the
airline app, navigate to current trip, tap the boarding pass icon, and if
you did it right, maybe the boarding pass shows up. When it's my turn, I
sail through because while I'm as tech savvy as the next guy, I know I can
do it faster with the tried and true paper version.

That or plastic works quite adequately for me.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Fri, 10 Apr 2015 12:57:17 -0700, Ken Blake wrote:

On Fri, 10 Apr 2015 14:48:26 -0500, Char Jackson
wrote:

I'm seeing that more and more when people are being asked to produce their
airline boarding pass. Fumble for the phone, exit Facebook, launch the
airline app, navigate to current trip, tap the boarding pass icon, and if
you did it right, maybe the boarding pass shows up. When it's my turn, I
sail through because while I'm as tech savvy as the next guy, I know I can
do it faster with the tried and true paper version.

I'm with you entirely. I don't have a smart phone, but even if I did,
I wouldn't use it for this. Besides all the things you mention, you
never know when your battery has run down or something else is wrong
with the phone.

I have the phone, but not the will, to mess with boarding passes and
payment methods.

As for the battery, I have an answer for that. I carry a small battery
pack with micro USB which will provide a fair amount of runtime if the
phone's battery is dead. And when not in use it holds it charge for a
long time...

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On 4/9/2015 5:01 PM, Ken Blake wrote:
On Thu, 09 Apr 2015 14:12:11 -0400, "(PeteCresswell)"
wrote:


Given the protections inerrant in credit cards, I can't see why people
use debit cards - unless it's the exposure to risk under most credit
card vendors' business models, which is around the extremely heavy
penalties if/when somebody makes a payment error.



I never make payment errors, since I have all my credit cards set up
for automatic payment. And my payment is always in full, so I never
pay any interest. They are called "credit" cards, but I don't really
treat them as such. I never spend more on them than I can afford to
spend.

Like you, I never use debit cards (except in ATM machines). If you
always pay in full, they have three big advantages over debit cards:

1. As you say, built-in protection.

2. The float on the money charged (although with today's extremely low
interest rates, that's not as meaningful as it used to be).

3. The airline mileage or cash-back feature built into many of them. I
almost always use a card that gets me airline mileage. I use the
mileage only for international travel, and that's worth more than the
cash-back other cards offer.

Automatic payment is another example of how easy online banking has
become. And when my statement comes out, I access it on the web and
reconcile it through Quicken (Quicken's reconciliation is umpteen
times faster and easier that what I did in the days before Quicken; it
takes me no more than a minute or two), so if there is an error in the
statement, I know it well before the payment is made and can take
action (although in all the years I've been doing this, I've never
found an error).

My favorite complaint is the cost of an overdraft. If you in error
spend more then you have you are fined. I forget what they are up to now
but I LOVE it. If someone is stupid enough to make such a mistake they
don't deserve a card. Give it to someone with a brain.

On 4/9/2015 12:19 PM, Wolf K wrote:
On 2015-04-09 9:51 AM, Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:
mike wrote:

Can you do safe online banking in win7?

Primary computer is win7 with firewall, AV, firefox, noscript...etc...
I've never had a known malware infection.
But that pesky "known" negates everything.

I'm paranoid about online banking.
For that, I boot a live linux CD that never goes anywhere but my bank.
It gives me a sense of security, but it's annoying.

Why don't you just install the Linux and use it instead? You'd have a
far,
far less chance of being compromised by malware, keyloggers, hackers, and
all of that Windows-related stuff.

It's the bank's security holes I worry about.

"Don't worry,be happy."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-diB65scQU

On 4/10/2015 4:35 AM, mike wrote:
On 4/9/2015 6:51 AM, Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:
mike wrote:

Can you do safe online banking in win7?

Primary computer is win7 with firewall, AV, firefox, noscript...etc...
I've never had a known malware infection.
But that pesky "known" negates everything.

I'm paranoid about online banking.
For that, I boot a live linux CD that never goes anywhere but my bank.
It gives me a sense of security, but it's annoying.

Why don't you just install the Linux and use it instead? You'd have a
far,
far less chance of being compromised by malware, keyloggers, hackers, and
all of that Windows-related stuff.

That's wrong on so many levels.
First problem is that linux can't do some of the stuff I REQUIRE.
And the stuff it does do requires a major change in mindset and
user interface.
And I live in the real world where I don't control the other end
of most of my interactions.
And the linux desktop has such little market share that the hackers
ain't interested in it yet. Just wait...it will happen...and it
don't matter one whit that your kernel is safe if your keyboard
won't respond and you have no guru available to sort it for you.

Linux is a protester's toy. It's like hating the government and
wanting to live in cave, boast about freedom thinking they are better
off than others then post on Win7 groups about how great it is.

Laughable.

On Fri, 10 Apr 2015 16:50:10 -0400, Al Drake
wrote:

On 4/10/2015 4:17 PM, Tim Slattery wrote:
Ken Blake wrote:


I think Wolf only visits restaurants that bring a WiFi terminal to the
table, but I never think to ask about that before they show me to my table.

In my experience, such a restaurant is rare in the USA, but they are
very common in France and Italy, maybe in other countries in Europe
too.

In the US, the only restaurant I've seen with such gizmos is Uno's. No
place else.

In the US? You've been to how many?

I was at one a few minutes ago that supplies Wi-Fi. I've seen more
than I can count or even remember.



Sure, me too. But that's totally irrelevant to the topic under
discussion. We're not talking about Wi-Fi. We're talking about a
restaurant that brings to your table a "gizmo" (operated by Wi-Fi)
that accepts your credit card for payment of the bill.

Like Tim, I can only recall one such restaurant in the US (a different
one than his). I'm sure there are others, but my point was that they
are rare.

On Fri, 10 Apr 2015 17:24:46 -0400, Wolf K
wrote:

On 2015-04-10 5:15 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
[...]
I'm the one who said I stopped going to banks in 1984. I'm quite deep into
electronic banking and don't consider it to be any more risky than
non-electronic banking. The specific risks are different, but the overall
risk level is surely no worse and quite possibly better for electronic
banking. IMHO, of course.

You know, the more I think about it, the more I realise I ignore on-line
banking because my bank is just 2-1/2 blocks away.


My bank isn't much farther away than yours. But, as I said, I almost
never go there other than to use their ATM, or deposit a check that
I've gotten (and getting a check is extremely rare).



I just haven't felt
the need for the convenience of going on-line. I just drop by the bank
on my to the post office (7-1/2 blocks).



Post Office? That's also close to me, but I probably go there less
often than once a year or so.

On 4/10/2015 5:10 PM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Fri, 10 Apr 2015 16:50:10 -0400, Al Drake wrote:

On 4/10/2015 4:17 PM, Tim Slattery wrote:
Ken Blake wrote:


I think Wolf only visits restaurants that bring a WiFi terminal to the
table, but I never think to ask about that before they show me to my table.

In my experience, such a restaurant is rare in the USA, but they are
very common in France and Italy, maybe in other countries in Europe
too.

In the US, the only restaurant I've seen with such gizmos is Uno's. No
place else.

In the US? You've been to how many?

I was at one a few minutes ago that supplies Wi-Fi. I've seen more
than I can count or even remember. This particular place is one of the
smallest establishments anywhere. Has about 8 booths.

There are plenty of "gizmos" in my area.

Are we still talking about the same thing? The gizmo being discussed is a
method to pay for your meal by swiping a credit card at the table, versus
watching the waiter/waitress walk away with your credit card and disappear
in the back for a few minutes.

The "Gizmo" I was referring to is the one described as only being seen
at Uno's. The only one seen in the US. No place else. The place I was at
tonight also had a "Gizmo"

Just about every place I go including the Pizza takeout has that hand
held device. The owner was talking to me about one he could hook up to
his cell phone.

The Ipad at the coffee shop. How more Gizmo can you get?



Maybe Siri I guess.