Seeing as most of planet earth uses on-line banking to some degree, I was shocked to see this story that more than 75% of bank websites are insecure by design according to a recently published study:
“To our surprise, design flaws that could compromise security were widespread and included some of the largest banks in the country,” [University of Michigan computer science professor Atul] Prakash said in a statement. “Our focus was on users who try to be careful, but unfortunately some bank sites make it hard for customers to make the right security decisions when doing online banking.”
The report was based on the examination of websites for 214 financial institutions. The study was conducted in 2006, so it’s possible the design flaws have been cleaned up. But somehow I doubt it as the website from my bank hasn’t changed in at least that long and from what I can tell it still behaves the same way it did when I started using it.
Perhaps it’s time to ask some hard questions of those who safeguard our money?