Password overlap is the practice of using one on-line password at more than one website. At first glance, it seems obvious that doing this would make it far easier for a hacker who steals the password at a less-secure website to turn around and use it to “walk in the front door” of a very secure website—like your bank, for example. But who would be dull enough to use their online-banking password for any other website?
It turns out that, according to a recent msnbc blog post by Bob Sullivan ( http://redtape.msnbc.com/2010/02/for-years-computer-security-experts-have-been-preaching-that-users-should-never-share-the-same-password-across-their-connecte.html), nearly 75% of 4 million people surveyed do exactly that. Worse, about half of all consumers use both their banking password and their banking user name at other sites. In such cases, any hacker who steals them from an unsecure site can have instant, unfettered access to the rest of your cyber-life as well as your real cash and personal information.
While most consumers are not willing to create and maintain a unique user name/password combination for every website they use, your on-line banking login information should be unique and used only for your banking website. Sullivan’s post wisely suggests that if unique logins are too much for you to handle, you should consider creating at least three unique logins: one for your financial sites, one for sites that store your personal information, and one for generic logins.
Fortunately, most financial institutions provide additional security layers for your on-line access. Nevertheless, increasingly sophisticated cybercriminals are successfully breaching on-line banking security to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars per year. To date, banks have refused to reimburse their customers for losses due to cybercrime and have vigorously worked to prevent the establishment of any legal precedent requiring them to do so.
That is why InterComputer Corporation is working with the largest U.S. banks to implement an insured electronic transaction environment that covers all parties with complete underwritten loss recovery.
Tags: cybercrime, on-line banking