On December 20, 2009, the Andhra Pradesh cybercrime police arrested a 23-year-old internet hacker for allegedly swindling Rs 30,600 from an HDFC Bank customer. This is simply a case in point. While banks prefer not to go public about cybercrime for obvious reasons, Minister of State for Home Shakeel Ahmad informed the Lok Sabha in February 2009 that banks across the country lost Rs 6.57 crore to internet frauds in 233 incidents of cybercrime, with Tamil Nadu topping the list, in 2008.
This, however, should not deter you from online banking, which has numerous benefits. It allows you to make instant payments of your electricity, telephone, gas and other bills. You can also give standing instructions to the bank to pay your recurring bills automatically. All you need to do is complete a simple one-time registration for each biller. Besides being convenient, it’s a free service. You can also check your transactions at any time of the day and as many times as you want. Requesting the bank for a statement would not only waste time but also money. Moreover, the bank would take days to deliver it to your doorstep.
“Paying house rent, electricity and phone bills is just a click away now. One need not indulge in writing cheques and waiting for days to get it cleared. You get the account balance statement also instantly, which helps you keep track of your money,” says Praveen Kumar (name change), a media professional. And, if the fund transfer has to be made outstation, where the bank does not have a branch, the bank would demand outstation charges. But with online banking, it’s free.
Online banking also allows you to transfer money to your own accounts or third-party accounts, check your account status online, request for cheques, stop payments, make investments, open a fixed deposit (FD) account, apply for debit card and loan, and even check your home loan status. “When you transfer money to somebody’s account, you are given a separate transaction password, which makes internet transactions safe, too. Also, some banks provide a transaction remark column, something similar to a counterfoil of a cheque book, where you can write the details of the transactions and keep a track of your account balance,” concurs Gaurav Sharma, a network administrator at an IT firm.
Credit card users can pay their credit card bills online and get a loan on their cards. They can also apply for an additional card, request a credit line increase and report loss of cards online. Some banks even give you the facility to buy mutual funds directly from the online banking system. The list is not exhaustive.
With so many goodies online, why aren’t more people doing internet banking? Estimates peg the Indian online banking user base at just around 20 per cent of overall online users (around 70-80 million).
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Some users still prefer face-to-face banking, while others do not know how to transfer money online. Besides, some users find some website interface too complex to surf. The most common refrain, however, is: “I do not have a comfort level as yet. I still feel it’s not secure.”
Cases like Microsoft admitting that internet explorer (IE6) did have a security problem — because of which Gmails could be hacked in China — only add fear to the psyche. A new report by security firm Trend Micro also reveals that there are at least 25,000 Indian email addresses and passwords on different hacker forums. They comprise a mix of email ids and passwords from sites like Yahoo, Gmail, Sify, and different webmail and corporate email boxes.
The fact remains, though, that most banks in India have security uppermost on their minds — they use 128-bit and higher levels of encryption (scrambling of information for transmission to prevent hackers from reading the information). Deutsche Bank AG, India, for instance, uses a 128-bit digital certificate from VeriSign (the world’s leading internet certification authority) for encryption of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) session (provides a strong degree of protection against tampering while data is moving through the internet). So do banks like ICICI and HDFC. Some banks like Kotak (use 256-bit SSL) and have a ‘secure login’ feature, which creates a temporary code that is instantly emailed to your mobile and email box. Only after you enter the code, you can proceed with online banking.
Banks also encourage the use of the virtual keypad, which is an online representation of your regular keyboard. Virtual keypads of many banks dynamically jumble the keys (can be irritating too). This feature protects you from malicious ‘Spyware’ and ‘Trojan’ programs, which are designed to capture keystrokes.
HSBC, on its part, has a multi-layer logon verification that combines the username and password, and a one-time security code generated by an online security device (provided by the bank to its account holders). And many banks like SBI are certified by VeriSign certifies that information exchanged online during a valid session is protected during its transmission over the internet.
Users, on their part, need to be vigilant too. Banks, for instance, never ask for personal information over the phone or emails. Besides, passwords need to be complex (alpha-numeric) and not birthdates, telephone numbers or, worse still, names or surnames (which, surprisingly, most people do). And, last but not the least, if there’s any anomaly in your online bank account, you must inform the bank immediately.