Ensuring Your Internet Banking Is Safe. 1: The first thing to do before you sign up for Internet banking is to find out more information about the bank. Since the bank has no physical offices, you should always check to make sure that it is legitimate. The first place to visit to find information about a bank is by visiting its website and reading through the "About Us" section or a similar section that describes the organization. There are several pieces of information that you should look for. For example, you should definitely find out the official legal name of the bank and the bank’s head office address. Check out the history of the bank and see if the bank is trustworthy. Also look around for the bank’s insurance coverage information.
2: Before you sign up for Internet banking or access the member area of the bank’s website, you should make sure that you are on the official banks website and not on one of the fraudulent web sites. There are still many instances when someone will try to steal your login, personal and financial information by creating a fraudulent website similar to your bank’s website. These fraudulent Internet banking websites will use the same bank’s name and exactly the same design as your bank’s website but will have a different URL address. It is also necessary to mention that even though the web address is different, it is very similar to a real one and is sometimes hard for a non-technical person to distinguish from a real one. The main advice here is to make sure that you are typing a correct URL address when you are accessing your bank’s website. 3: This tip deals with the email communication that you receive from your Internet banking institution. It also applies to the previous tip in certain ways. There are many cases when fraudulent emails were sent to the bank’s account holders. There are several possible ways how these lawbreakers could have obtained your email address. What they are trying to do is to send you an email that looks like it is from your official bank and to get you to go to one of the fraudulent websites described above. There are several ways to check for these fake emails. For example, if the email doesn’t use your real name and just says something like “Dear account holder”, this is a major red flag. 4: The last step is to also check the URL web address listed in the email that is sent to you by your Internet banking institution. It will be typed exactly as the real web address of the bank. If, however, this is a fake email, the URL will actually take you to a different fraudulent website with a different address. In most cases you can check the real web address simply by pointing your mouse cursor (without actually clicking) on the typed address. If you do click on the link, always re-check that the web address is correct after you get to the website. | 
