Can anyone tell me why the banks wish us to always type the address into the browser? Is it really different from using a bookmark?
You can use a bookmark, as long as you typed it originally.
"Phishers" send URLs that *Look* ok (like say www.eastpac.com) but aren't actually correct (it should be www.eastpac.com.au), people click on these URLs and get taken to a site that looks identical to the banks, but isn't. Then they enter their password and the thieves now have everything they need to steal the users' money.
People using HTML e-mail have to be even more careful as the links contained in HTML can say www.eastpac.com but actually take you to 95.23.207.49 (in the same way that a web page can link any given text to a different page) which is where the thieves have set up their identical looking web site.
Recently even more insidious "phishing" tactics to create web sites whose URLs look exactly the same, but actually use different UniCode character glyphs (shapes) that are identical to the english glyphs the user would be expecting and take the user to the phisher's web site (as although the name looks the same on the screen it's actually a different name, and thus a different web site)
All this can be avoided if you type the name yourself, or use a bookmark you created yourself. Of course if you type the name yourself, there's a chance you could make a typo which would take
Of course, it's possible that someone smart could work out a way to edit your bookmarks using some evil scripting, but that's another issue :)
This information was included in the article on this subject in The Australian on Monday. I now find there are instructions to do this on the Westpac site. It also tells you to close your browser after signing off. Why?
Because if you're using a browser in an internet cafe, it's possible (although unlikely) that someone could use information that it still has cached to get into your account. In the most trivial example by hitting the 'back' button if you leave the browser window open.
Have fun, Shay -- =========================== Shay Telfer ================================ Perth, Western Australia Technomancer Join Team Sungroper in the Opinions for hire [POQ] 2005 World Solar Challenge http://public.xdi.org/=Shay fnord <http://sungroper.asn.au/>
