#Blog - Peeking Banks and how they wanna know what you're doing

illyab (47)in #money • 6 years ago

#Blog - Peeking Banks and how they wanna know what you're doing

What could be more valuable than money in the modern world? Something that could be worth its own weight in gold (if it had any weight)? Oil? Dollars?

Information is the correct answer. Information gives an edge to the ones who possess it. The right piece of intel can mean the difference between victory or defeat, it may be the difference between life or death or getting broke or filthy rich. Banks are using more and more sophisticated methods to collect and store data from their customers.

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And some of these methods are extremely shady. Under the excuse of protection, banks install suspicious software on your computer to prevent "phishing" or to guarantee the security of your accounts, data and transactions. In resumen, your hard earned money.

But is this what really happens? According to several accounts by bank customers, that's not entirely true. These programs are often installed without the permission of the user and, sometimes, refusal to accept the installation can prevent you from accessing your own account or worse! It can even get your account terminated in extreme cases!

According to an article on The Telegraph, banks use so called "security software" to collect and store confidential data to create behaviour reports on how you use their services.

Would you trust someone you haven't ever seen your life or people you have no idea who they are to provide such data? There are several instances of programs that do the above, but there's one specific example I was a target of.

Trusteer Rapport - Wolf under sheep clothing?

The company, acquired in an extremely dubious transaction by IBM, is responsible for the development of the aforementioned software. Located then in Isreal, now in Boston, the program allegedly protects your information during your usage of the online banking services. But according to this article by The Independent and personal experience, the program does far more than that.

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It collects your data, stores in their server and use that to create a profile of your banking activities. That's just one problem. The second is that it attempts to alter your system files and deactivate your anti-virus, just like your regular malware. Suspicious, huh? They say it's to avert fraudulent activities, but what would I say?

Banks like Santander, Bank of America and ING use the software. On my bank, it's still not obligatory, but at the very moment it becomes, I'll kiss it goodbye. I like my information safe and sound, thanks. Apart from that, the program won't allow it to be easily uninstalled and slows down your system A LOT. If you wanna get rid of it, you're gonna have to do it by hand and that, my friend, takes some good time. There's also another example I'll cover now.

G-Buster Browser defense - A disgrace weighing a few hundred Megabytes

Currently used by the Brazilian bank Caixa Economica Federal, Brazil's largest public bank, and Itaú-Unibanco, the largest private, it acts very similar to the Trustee bastard. But the worst part of it is that you just can't use online service without it running. And don't even think about ending the tasks.

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It'll reopen and come back in force, eating out more memory and CPU cycles. There's no uninstallation option and, like the one above, you'll have to do it manually and weep about not being able to use your online banking services.

Ending themes

So I advise you to avoid installing such programs in order to protect your data and machine. Make sure you always run cleaner software on your computer and if you installed any of these programs, I advise you to delete them right away. I don't like the idea of having spooks putting their hands on information regarding what I do or what I don't do and I believe you also don't.

If I disappear out of a sudden, you know what happened haha

So stay safe and Steem on!

Who am I?
Just a regular person looking to make the world a better place. Steemit is home! Steemit is life!

@illyab - Keep in touch to get more content and steem on!

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