Gone are the days when you have to wait in line during weekdays when you want to withdraw, deposit, or transfer money to another account in your bank’s office. The good news is, you can do all of those plus a lot more if your bank offers online banking.

Online banking is a service that allows users to access their bank accounts through the Internet, allowing them to do banking transactions conveniently. Here the main advantages of online banking:

• Accessibility. You can do banking transactions anywhere as long as you have a computer and an Internet connection. You can also do those transactions any time of the day too, even if it is a Saturday, Sunday, or a holiday.
• Convenience. You don’t have to wait in line for a long time just to do a simple transaction. Simply log on to your account online without having to leave your chair.
• Security. Worried about carrying a lot of cash after withdrawing money? You don’t have to anymore. Simply clicking a few buttons will pay for the item that you bought or pay for your electric bill. With web encryption protocols like SSL and TLS, your data is kept secure from high-tech criminals too.

Saving money is very important so that when the time comes you need to spend on something, like a new car or a vacation somewhere, you know where to get the money. The best way to save money is to put it in a bank’s savings account.

In choosing a savings account, you will have to make sure you get the best out of it. Needless to say, you have to get one that offers a high interest rate among other features. If you are looking for a good bank where you will entrust your money, here are some tips:

• Interest rate. The higher, the better. The more interest rate, the bigger your money will become after some time. Competition between banks has made them offer higher interest rates to attract customers.
• Online banking access. You will surely love when you can access your bank account and do transactions as well anytime you wish. Online banking can do that. You don’t have to wait in line or beat the banking hours just to withdraw deposit your money.
• Minimum Deposit. Banks require that there must be a minimum amount of money in your account before it can earn interest. High interest savings accounts usually have high minimum deposits required every month. Choose one that is most flexible to you.

Phishing is a type of malicious scam that aims to trick users into voluntarily providing sensitive information. This type of attack is know becoming very common as online banking and other financial transactions are gaining popularity.

This type of trickery does not employ much of complexity. It simply makes use of some known browser exploits in some cases, but mainly focuses more in social engineering to gain a victim’s trust. Here is how it works:

• Scammer crafts an email, usually from a bank, telling users that there is some important notice. The email either asks the victim to reply with the information (log-in ID, password, etc.) or asks the user to click the embedded link which is "poisoned" or directs to a fake website that looks almost the same as a real one, so that the user can "log in".
• When the message has been prepared, the cyber-criminal sends out. A user reads the message and responds to it, the scammer logs the details and later uses it to make fraudulent transactions.

Banks always warns their users to be on the lookout for these types of schemes. To be safe, simply ignore such messages and report it to the bank if possible.

When you urgently need to access your online bank account and your only option is to use a public computer (Internet cafes), here is a way to make sure you don’t fall victim to keyloggers.

• Go to PortableApps’ website and download Portable Firefox. Firefox is an open-source and free Internet browser. This one you are downloading is a portable version you can save and run in your USB flash drive.
• Save the file into your computer and run it after the download completes. Connect your USB flash drive to your computer and let extract the Portable Firefox in there.
• Open the folder and run portable Firefox. Now visit the website of your online bank, enter the username and password. Firefox will prompt you if you want to save the password, click yes.
• Open other websites you wish to include into the saved passwords. Do the same process that you did.

Now when you need to use a public computer, simply connect your USB flash drive, load Portable Firefox, and enter the online banking site. You will not need to type in your password at all since you already previously saved it.

You will never know when you need to access your bank account on the Internet. Normally, you would use a "safe" computer, like your laptop, your computer at home, or one that you have in the office. The problem is, what if you don’t have access to any of those computers and you really need to do a bank transaction?

Well, there are always public computers, a.k.a. Internet cafes or computer rental shops. For general surfing, those public computers are fine. However, if you will be using them to do transactions online, then that is quite dangerous for you never know if that computer has a keylogger or any type of software that can track your activities.

Now if you really can’t avoid using a public computer for online banking, here are some things you can do:

• Scramble your Password: When the time comes for you to enter your password, type the first character, followed by random characters. Highlight the random characters and type the next character. Repeat the process until you entered all the characters of your password.
• Use a Portable Browser: Portable software is basically a type of computer program that you can instantly use without installing it. Use a portable browser saved in your flash drive that has your passwords saved so you would not need to type any password.
• Use a Different OS: If you are still paranoid about keyloggers and your security, you can download and use various Linux distros into your flash drive or CD, and boot it up in the public computer. With that, you are sure that no keylogger will be able to monitor your activities.

As always, never forget to log out of the website you visit. Without logging out, the cookies of your session is still stored in the browser’s cache, making it accessible to anyone. Also, make sure you change your password as soon as you get home or have access using your own computer.

It surely is a fact that online banking provides a lot of convenience to people who use this service. However, one big issue is really about security, now that phishing, identity theft, and other fraudulent activities are increasingly happening on the Internet.

To be able to use online banking services, a person must first be a part of that financial institution providing online banking. The bank then provides log-in details like a user ID and a password for their client to use to log in to the online banking website. Some banks use additional security like devices that have another code that the user has to input along with the log-in details, aside from the standard Internet encryption protocols.

However, these security measures that these institutions provide can only do so much. The user is also is responsible for his or her own security. The log-in details that they have is considered as the key to their funds. Anyone aside from them that happens to know those log-in details may have unrestricted access to their bank accounts.

Phishing schemes that trick users into voluntarily providing sensitive information, keyloggers, spyware, and other malware installed in a compromised computer that monitor the activities of the user are just some examples of security threats when it comes to transactions with online banks.

Security is not just a one-way street where the bank is the one to provide the security of their clients. Clients and the bank should work hand-in-hand to prevent unauthorized access of their accounts. With proper education and Internet security practices, online banking can be really secure.

Online banking provides a lot of convenience to banking clients. It allows them to transact with their respective banks anytime and anywhere.

However, this convenience has a drawback. Security is big issue where banking information may be stolen and used fraudulently, resulting to loss of money. Even though there are security measures such as web encryption and other security technologies in place, they are still not bullet-proof in terms of preventing illegal use of identity. The current real problem is actually not the security, it is more on the users.

People who avail of the convenience of online banking should be aware of the current threats like phishing and other forms of identity theft. In the same manner, they must be educated on how to make transactions online in a safe way. For example, user names and passwords should never be given out to anyone, even to someone who pretends to be from the same bank.

Since online banking is gaining huge popularity these days with millions of people using its services, this can be a problem. It may seem to complicated at first, but is actually not that difficult.

The ease of banking almost anywhere with the use of a mobile phone is attracting a lot of customers. A recent study shows that it may attract even more, especially young ones.

In a study conducted by IBM, data shows that 21 percent of the of the 1424 American respondents aged 18-34 used their mobile phones in doing banking transactions against only 10 percent of the general population.

With that data, mobile banking will balloon further, significantly caused by younger, tech-savvy consumers. Currently, almost 90 percent of the top American banks offer mobile banking services to their customers.

A separate study shows that the only thing holding back other banking customers from using mobile banking are the security concerns. Once those have been addressed, it is predicted that more consumers will be using the convenient service.

In spite of the satisfaction of users transacting with banks online, a study shows that the number of Americans logging into online banking sites have decreased.

Data from the fourth quarter of 2007 conducted by comScore shows that 47.3 million users of online banking services, showing a small amount of growth compared to the same quarter of the previous year. However, from the second quarter of 2006 to the third quarter, data shows that the number of customer transactions have decreased nearly one percent, the lowest decline recorded in five years.

The most likely reason of the decline in online banking transactions is probably due to the increase of popularity of mobile banking, where banking transactions can be done with the use of a mobile phone. This can be backed up by a survey that says majority of users who transact their banking needs over the Internet are satisfied or pleased.

With the opening of more alternatives to traditional banking, customers are seeking new and convenient alternatives when it comes to their banking needs. Though Internet banking is very convenient, it still requires a user to have a computer and Internet access while with mobile banking, transactions can be done almost anywhere.

Banking transactions is no longer limited to visits to local banks and Internet banking. According to a research, mobile banking, or banking transactions done through mobile phones is set to increase tenfold by 2011.

Juniper Research, a telecoms analyst said that their research shows that mobile banking transactions is set to jump to around 816 million in just four years. In the same research, results show that more and more financial organizations will offer or add more transactions offered for mobile banking, including services such as account management, financial information, bills payment, fund transfers, and of course, customer service.

The challenge behind this trend is security. Financial institutions offering mobile banking services should find ways to further improve security measures to gain the confidence of their consumers. Transaction costs and customer support may be a possible obstacle in deterring users from making transactions through their mobile phones.