Real banking sites full of online design flaws

Report: Banking sites full of online design flaws
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industrie ... htm?csp=34

Report: Banking sites full of online design flaws
By Jordan Robertson, AP Technology Writer

SAN FRANCISCO — Many U.S. banks are unwittingly training their online customers to take risks with their passwords and other sensitive account information, leaving them more vulnerable to fraud, research shows. ...

Thanks for the info JJ

It's a shame that they summarised with

To fight that, the best protection remains: Don't click on links sent in e-mails.

because that is only a small part of the dangers of internet banking..

CLICKLING ON MAILS SENT through is never wrong afterall we all signed up clicking a link from our e-mail which we used to register
I think its ignorant of the official website of those banking and probably an online directory of such banks need publicity

My bank sends me information about my account all the time, and includes a link to log in to my account directly from the email. Even though I expect the emails and trust them, I do not click on the link. I have the site bookmarked and go in from that. I only click on links in emails when they are verifying a new registration, and that only seems to happen with forum-type sites (and dating sites). Since I never sign up for forum and dating sites with my real information (not even here, I'm afraid ), I am taking less of a risk with those links.

If you click a link (from an email) you give that line off commands permission to run on your computer. It could just be something innocent like loading a web page in your favorite browser or something more harmful, loading a malicious program like a key board logger and opening a web page.
Your chosen ID at the moment doesn't matter then as a key logger only will register (and send) the keys that are used and the order in which they are used. Normally your protection program should prevent it from running anyway, or find it with the next scan and delete it. In the same way a virus could be installed on your computer. Most rubbish that comes in that way is caught by your firewall and virus scanner, but some do get through.
So clicking email links can always bring a risk and if you don't know the sender you might as well try to get to the recommended web site by typing it in your browser by hand. Your browser program is much better suited to block unwanted lines from running then your email program like MS Outlook.
Windoze is coming out this week (10 September 2008) with a nice patch just to prevent that kind of tricks. So keep your machine updated and think before you click.