Internet Banking, Splat!

Most regular computer users know they are continually being hacked and spammed, and broken in on. One day a mysterious file appeared on my computer, it was a massive 15.7 gigabytes, about what is needed to remember five or six full-length films. When I tried to open the file, it was locked in someway. So I rubbed everything off my disk and reinstalled my files.

Internet banking relies on the security of Windows Explorer, but all Explorer users know that it is wide open. Trojan horses are files that appear secretly on your computer that sometimes are programmed to watch what keys you stroke when typing your pin numbers and credit cards details and so forth. The senders of these insidious files are known as “phishers”.

The other thing that was very strange was that at 2 a.m. in the morning I woke to see my computer turned on and a box showed that said “downloading C drive”, all my information was being hacked away. That was on a Windows system. People say that Apple is safer but a few nights later my Apple computer also turned itself on at 2 a.m. I was up, so I un-plugged it.

If you only have day-to-day money in your internet bank account it’s not so much of a worry but if you have your life’s savings in an internet account at the bank you could find it missing. The bank would not compensate you as the money will have been removed using your proper details and your password. I met man in Florida that had lost $22,000 from his account, siphoned off without his knowledge.

I’ve instructed my bank to block any money transfers via the internet, so now I can look at the account and see the statement details but I have to send a letter or a fax when I want money sent out.

People don’t understand how vulnerable these computer systems are. I met a hacker that told me he was part of a young group led by a nine year old boy, they took millions from Citibank; they also hacked Visa and Delta airlines; they would all go for luxury weekends to Reno, free of charge.

The baby bandits were eventually arrested by the FBI in California. It was all kept very quiet. The kids didn’t go to prison as they were all so young. But they had to agree to stay off the internet for a number of years, from memory, I think it was seven years. Most of the money was returned, over one hundred million dollars had been shuffled away. The nine year old leader of the group had the extraordinary ability to see the hidden codes in pages and pages of symbols and numbers. He cracked the codes and gave them to the other kids and they took it from there. A decade later, I am still trying to figure out how to fix my margins in Microsoft Word!

Everyone that uses Explorer knows that there is something terribly wrong with it, but it is only now that major alerts are being posted by agencies that deal with computer security. Internet banking is going to fall apart unless these security problems can be fixed. In the meantime you should take precautions and have the bulk of your savings away from internet access.