Swiping notifications from banking apps should be considered a competitive sport. Everyone does it on a daily basis, and the speed of the swipe depends on the size of the purchase.
All jokes aside, you don’t want to look at the transactions, and you don’t want to see the red numbers. Using cash stings because you actually have to give the money away, and if your wallet empties, there’s no more to spend. Credit cards give you leeway, and all those transactions you make are visible in your banking apps.
If someone wants to abuse the system and hack your phone, they could take all that hard-earned money away. In life, the worst mistakes are the unknowns, the things you don’t know you should be doing (or not doing). When it comes to cybersecurity, there are many absolute musts for safe online banking. Here’s what you should do.
Use a VPN
If you auto-connect to the Wi-Fi at Starbucks when you’re getting your morning coffee, you will eventually run into a significant problem. Hackers love to lurk on unprotected networks, steal credentials, and promote malicious software. You should never connect to public Wi-Fi without a virtual private network (VPN).
VPNs are the first must for cybersecurity protection on public Wi-Fi. They change your IP address and make it close to impossible for hackers to find you. Another method to mask your IP address is using a proxy. But the debate of proxy vs VPN is a quick one. The latter can give you added security protection, a no-logs policy, and more safety features. It’s an easy choice.
Set up multi-factor authentication
Banks have been around for centuries. They’ve dealt with all the scams, criminals, thieves, and schemes. But they haven’t dealt with hackers. Data breaches can happen, and your personal information can fall into the wrong hands.
There’s a reason why you’re sick and tired of using multi-factor authentication for every banking app. It’s because the method works for keeping hackers at bay. If you haven’t enabled 2FA yet on your money apps, you have to stop reading and do it immediately. An email and password are easy to get, but your physical device isn’t. 2FA is a safety must.
Update software regularly
You’ve probably experienced a situation where a banking app doesn’t allow you to log in before you update it to the newest version. So you sit there cursing at the developers for making you wait five minutes while the update installs. Well, next time you see that happen, you should be thanking them.
Developers release operating system and software updates throughout the year, sometimes even multiple times a month. They address security breaches, possible exploits, or weak links in the app that make it safer. Sometimes, they’ll even release a hotfix if a fake app is misleading users.
Use complex passwords
Cybercriminals capitalize on laziness. Many people (too many) use the same password on every account, so all they need to do is breach one. That can be your social media account or that random e-commerce site you logged into once, saved the password in the browser, and never opened it again.
Solid password health takes a bit of work. You need to have a different password for every account. It must have more than 15 characters, including symbols, numbers, uppercase, and lowercase letters. Oh, and you also need to change the passwords every three months.
Activate security alerts
Every banking app comes with security alerts. You can set a limit to how much you want to spend in a day. Keep that limit in a low range, so every purchase over 50 of 100 dollars comes with an email notification and a text message.
That will save you from impulse purchases. It will also save you from hackers. Security alerts help you if someone logs in with your credentials in a different place or tries to copy your PIN or password with a keylogger.
Don’t add your credit card everywhere
If you see an ad on social media that leads you to a page that seems suspicious, press the closing button and just leave. Even if you like that product, even if it says it can reverse time and fix all of your mistakes, trust your gut and leave the website.
Don’t add any personal information to links you get from suspicious emails, and learn how to recognize phishing attacks. If you use common sense mixed with these tips, you’ll be able to evade all those pesky hackers and never become their target.