Money and Stuff

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Our Credit Union has a large share of international members who, in general, travel a lot. This means that we make greater-than-average use of online systems to obtain access to our accounts. Therefore today I’m going straight to the point with ideas on helping you protect your money when you deal with it online.

A dedicated computer for Online Banking

The first thing is to make sure you use security questions by answering them. These questions are about personal things, and they will come up every time you do something

unusual in your Online Banking, or start a transaction that involves moving money from your account. Security questions add a layer of protection to your funds.

For Online Banking, be it the Credit Union’s or that with another financial institution you use, the best thing to do is to always enter using the same computer and registering it as safe. If you use OAS FCU’s you are likely familiar with the “Register this computer” line that allows you to mark a computer as safe and bypass security questions when logging in. Registering means that whenever your account is accessed from any other terminal, the security questions will pop up to verify it’s you entering, and it’s called double authentication.

Remember your password

It’s very easy to tell Chrome, Firefox, etc. to go ahead and remember our passwords so that when we come back we don’t have to enter them. This creates two risks: one, because we could forget the password, even as momentary lapse; and two, it grants instant access to our banking to anyone using our computers, as long as they know the website.

That’s especially dangerous if the computer is a laptop.

The responsibility of your money is… yours

And yours only. OAS FCU has in place every possible mechanism to protect your money and detect suspicious activity, but there will be times when something not authorized by you could go through undetected.

I’ll give you an example. In the early days of automatic direct debits for payments of

services, many members had gym memberships with automatic debit of dues; with time, they’d inform their gyms when they wanted to cancel their memberships, and think it done. But more often than not the gyms would not cancel the direct debits and members would continue paying for as long as they did not notice the debits. If they didn’t revise their account activity often, sometimes half a year would go on with continued payments, unchecked; the gyms took advantage of that.

The moral of the story: checking your account activity at least monthly is the best way to stay ahead of trouble.

If the Credit Union sends you an email…

If OAS FCU –or any of your other financial institutions- sends you an email stating any kind of problem, and the email contains a link to follow to fix the issue by entering some data, or accessing your account to fix it, don’t ever click it. Ever, ever, ever.

No financial institution will ever include a link asking you to enter data. That’s why, if you get this sort of email the best thing to do is contact the Credit Union/financial institution and ask. And email aside, any time when you wish to access your account, always do so by typing the URL in the address bar, and not clicking a link.

Shopping online

A very practical tip someone gave me recently was that for shopping online, the best thing

to do is use always the same card for payments. This allows you to keep track of your purchases but also increase the safety of your other cards.

Additionally, when you’re shopping online or making a reservation on a site you’ve never used before, inspect the address. Not every webpage has the appropriate level of data encryption and it’s your responsibility to protect your personal and financial data. Webpages starting with “http” indicate that unsecure protocol in data transfer and one should never enter personal data on a site that starts that way. On the other hand, entering data on a site’s checkout page starting with “https” is safe because that extra ‘s’ indicates that the data transfer is secured by encryption protocols.

Antivirus

There’s no better ally. Nowadays they are super easy to get and install online, and you can even set up subscription renewals by card. I won’t recommend any by brand, but instead direct you to PC Magazine’s periodically updated list of the best antivirus.

I’d like to mention that if you have several computers/devices, most Antivirus companies provide discount packages to cover several pieces of equipment at a lower per-device price, and that they include installation on smartphones.

Passwords

Until recently I didn’t know that the best passwords are actual sentences. For every hey we

add to a password, more secure it is. That’s why experts recommend making use of all space available on a password field to create passwords that are sentences that we know: lines from our favorite films, lyrics, jokes, all combined with symbols and numbers. I’ve noticed that my passwords have become easier to remember this way.

Regular cleaning

To end this post I am linking you a digital spring cleaning checklist for your devices. The use of this guide on a regular basis will greatly improve the security of your equipment and that, in turn, will protect your money better.