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I Don’t See a Lock During Internet Banking?

For the transmission of business information, such as your bank login details and credit card information, it is important that you use a secure connection with your bank. With a secure connection, https://websiteaddress is in the address bar of your browser instead of the normal http://websiteaddress. The letter ‘s’ stands for ‘secure’. You also see a lock in a green bar in the address bar or at the bottom of the browser screen. If you click on the lock, you can see if you are actually connected to the correct website.

Is the https:// or the lock missing? Or is there a strange name when you click on the lock? Then leave the website and type the URL again.

Website with (Green) Lock and https Not Always Legitimate

A website with a green lock and https in the address bar is not always legitimate. Where you could recognize a phishing website by the presence or absence of these two features until recently, because the idea was that false websites would not pay for a TLS certificate, this advice no longer applies. This is partly because TLS certificates (security certificate) are also available for free, making it attractive for false websites to place such a certificate. The false website is then verified, but still not reliable.

Safe Business Internet Banking in 5 Steps

  1. Keep your security codes secret.
  2. Make sure your bank card is never used by someone else.
  3. Ensure good security of the equipment you use for your banking affairs.
  4. Check your bank account, regularly for suspicious statements.
  5. Report incidents immediately to the bank and follow the bank’s instructions.
  6. In the case of large transactions, ensure the four-eyes principle or fiat system (have it approved by another authorized person).
  7. In the case of a creditor who wants to change their bank account in your system, make sure you first verify this carefully.
Reference Notes:

You may already be aware of my collaboration with the Dutch government and their endorsement of my Information Security PubQuiz. If not, you can read about it here. Regrettably, the government education site that underpins part of my PubQuizzes is not available in English. Therefore, I’ve translated the articles from “veiliginternetten.nl” and “alertonline.nl” and you can read them on my site. The original source for this article, in Dutch, can be found here.