The Dangers of On Line Banking
By Bob Branco
(Originally published in Word Matters, www.ernestdempsey.com)
In today’s society, we are encouraged to do much of life’s activities online, such as shopping, banking, filing income taxes, registering your car, and more. We put our social security numbers online, our account information online, and other personal information that, in my opinion, should remain as private as humanly possible. There are those who believe that we should accept the times we live in, and that doing business online is the wave of the future. I don’t doubt that this is where we’re headed. However, do we understand the potential dangers from making our personal information available on the internet?
While there are those of us who use our intelligence to do the right things online, there are those people who use this same intelligence to hack into our accounts and steal our identities. Before the internet was invented, how many of us were victimized in this way? Think about it. What was the worst thing we could have been afraid of by simply going into a bank to do business? Okay, so there was a slight chance that the bank could have been robbed. However, would you agree that a bank robbery is much more controllable than identity theft online?
I understand that we use technology more than ever, but we still must remain vigilant, and fully aware of the risks involved with using this technology. If we depend on the internet exclusively to guide us through all of life’s responsibilities, what happens if there is cyber terrorism? What would happen to all of our data? Can it be saved without a paper trail? After all, we seem to be trending away from paper and more toward the internet. Is this really healthy?
I think the internet is amazing, and most of us know what to do with it. With that said, it can be used against us in a very personal way. This is why we must be smart, careful, and extremely alert.
