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Guide to Essential Money Tools
Banking Tools
Who's got your identity?
As one in four report being ‘touched’ by identity fraud, it’s time to wise up to protection measures.
A quarter of UK adults have had their identity stolen or know someone who has fallen victim to ID fraud, according to Which? However, the rise in ID fraud could rapidly be reduced if consumers took more active measures to protect their identity. Only one in three people confirm they use different passwords for their accounts or bother to shred bills.
ID thieves access accounts, run up bills, launder money, carry out benefit fraud and take out fraudulent loans, and it is one of the UK’s fastest-growing crimes, with criminals netting an estimated £1.3bn last year.
The fraudsters use a range of methods to steal people’s identity. These include sending emails containing viruses that access information on people’s computers and rooting around in refuse bins to retrieve old till receipts and bank statements.
How to protect yourself:
- Do not use your mother’s maiden name or place of birth as a security password.
- Check your credit record annually.
- If you move make sure you let your bank know.
- Shred or rip up post before throwing it in the bin.
- Never use the same password for all your accounts.
- Do not carry address details in your wallet.
The bad language
Phishing
Phishing is the name given to the practice of sending emails at random purporting to come from a genuine company operating on the internet, in an attempt to trick customers of that company into disclosing information at a bogus website operated by fraudsters. These emails usually claim that it is necessary to ‘update’ or ‘verify your customer account information’, and they urge people to click on a link from the email which takes them to the bogus website. Any information entered on the bogus website will be captured by the criminals for their own fraudulent purposes.
How can I prevent myself being a victim of phishing?
The key thing is to be suspicious of all unsolicited or unexpected emails you receive, even if they appear to originate from a trusted source. Although your bank may contact you by email, they will never ask you to reconfirm your login or security password information by clicking on a link in an email and visiting a website. Stop to think about how your bank normally communicates with you and never disclose your password in full or personal information.
Banks will never contact you by email to ask you to enter your password or any other sensitive information by clicking on a link and visiting a website. The emails are sent out completely at random in the hope of reaching a live email address of a customer with an account at the bank being targeted.
What are Trojans?
Trojans take their name from the term ‘Trojan Horse’ and are a type of computer virus which can be installed on your computer without you realising. Trojans can be capable of installing a ‘keystroke logger’, which captures all of the keystrokes entered into a computer keyboard. Some specifically seek to capture passwords entered at certain websites, by capturing keystrokes or taking screen shots of sites you visit. This information is then sent to the fraudsters over the internet. Typically, the fraudsters send out emails at random to get people to click on a link from the email and visit a malicious website where vulnerabilities in the web browser are exploited to install the Trojan. The emails are not normally related to internet banking and try and dupe people into clicking on the link to the malicious website with a variety of excuses. Firewalls, up-to-date antivirus software and anti-spyware programmes provide the best defence against Trojans, so it is important to use these to protect your computer. Treat all unsolicited emails with caution and never click on links from such emails to visit unknown websites.
How can I protect myself against infection by a Trojan?
Currently, most Trojans take advantage of vulnerabilities in internet browsers used to access the worldwide web. To strengthen your protection, if you use Internet Explorer, you should ensure that you are using the latest version of the software. It is essential to download the latest Internet Explorer Critical Updates (also known as ‘security updates’ or ‘patches’) from the Windows Update site.
- Just as you protect your house with locks on windows and doors and maybe also a burglar alarm, it is essential to protect your computer by using up-to-date anti-virus software, doing regular scans of your computer to check for viruses, installing a personal firewall and downloading the
- latest security updates from your web browser and operating system.
- Treat all unsolicited emails (especially those from unknown senders) with caution, and never click on links from such emails to visit unknown websites.
- Install anti-virus software, keep it up-to-date and run regular security scans.
- Install and learn how to use a personal firewall.
- Install the latest security updates, also known as patches.
Detailed advice on how to protect your computer is available on getsafeonline.org.uk.
Some emails contain code to download the Trojan when a message is previewed or opened using ‘HTML view’ in your email program.
It is always safer not to open messages from unknown sources and to read messages in ‘plain text’ only.
How to spot suspicious emails
Trojan emails can masquerade as almost any kind of message, so you need to be treat all unsolicited emails you receive with caution, but the main similarity is that they try and get you to click on a link by alarming you (for example, “Your credit card will be charged”), or by tempting you with some dramatic information (such as, “Osama Bin Laden captured”, “Terrorists target Olympic Games”, “Someone sent you a private message”). You should consider using an anti-spam product to help to filter out such unsolicited emails.