Banking

[DKB_SATX]

Originally Posted by JBinKC

I see banks, including my own, with powerful mobile apps that allow mobile check depositing, account balances, account history, fund transfers, bill paying, ATM locators and allow insurance and investment transactions. The big question is, how safe is it to bank on a smart phone or an iPad?

2 banks I use have mobile applications for Android and iPhone. I really only focused on the features of the Android app since that's what my phone runs. I'm a professional computer geek and I'm skeptical about security, especially where my money is concerned.

Both applications require a login any time you access them, even if you were in the middle of something and switched applications on the phone it'll require re-authentication. I have configured the applications to require both my username and password to be entered each time, so I'm not presenting half the information to some scumbag who steals my phone.

This combined with setting a lock password on the phone itself provides pretty decent security. The only (minor) complaint I have is that the Chase app is somewhat picky about the image quality when photographing a check for deposit... an image that looks perfectly legible to me is sometimes rejected by the OCR software, but thus far I've been able to take another photo and get a successful deposit.

[KerriO]

It's my understanding that making these types of transactions over 3G is much more secure than over WiFi. How secure, though, I don't know. I would never log into my bank account over public WiFi at all, but I would under my own WiFi's firewall.

[Condoluminum]

The major 3G or 4G services are much more secure than open WiFi, and should be preferrred option if signals available. Using phone or token as WiFi Hotspot somewhat less secure, but still better than Internet Cafe or Free Hotspots, assuming passwords set up...

The next round of concerns will relate to GSM versions of 3G, since European Hackers have published articles on breaking GSM security. GSM technology used by AT&T and T-Mobile, and could result in phone hacks. So far Apple phones and PC's haven't been major hacking targets, but more due to lower populatiojn size (relative to weakly protected PC's running Windows and old Security software...). If iPads keep selling at rate of 25-30M/year, and iPhones at rates over 60M/year, they will become attractive targets...

And lastly, there are about 3 or 4 providers of software systems for smart-phones that can convet photographic image of checks into images that meet "Check21" standards for electronic deposits. Some better than others at image enhancement and processing. Whether you do from smartphone or home scanner or walk into bank or stuff into an ATM machine, paper checks no longer go home to issuing bank. They are imaged and the images are processed by the Fed and others...

[Wayward]

I go into a bank building about once or twice a year. Use BillPay, AMEX and ATMs. Ain't HTTPs just grand?.

Last time I stopped in the branch was for a cashiers check and all the people were gone except for nice woman at a giant desk. She pointed me to a row of booths in the back, each with a webcam, video tube, and a handset.

When I stood in front of the booth, the tube lit up with a grainy image of a woman on the other end of the webcam. She wouldn't tell me where she actually was ("security purposes") and asked me to place my ID on a little scanner. The cashiers check printed out at the front desk.

I asked, walking out, "Isn't there an app for that?"