Will .bank domain enhance online banking security?
By Bryan on October 12, 2011 | Security basics, online security, .bank, new domains, safe banking, banking security, online banking
Surely, you have noticed a lot of different domains while browsing the internet. The most common is *.com as a shortening of 'commercial' because from the beginning addresses like this were intended for business. Also, there are .gov (for U.S. governmental institutions only), *.edu for educational institutions websites and hundreds of others.
There are certain domains that were intended for countries like *.co.uk, *.us, *.ru. Of course, it does not mean that the company has always to be set up in the country of which domain is used. There are cases when a country domains like .to ( Tonga) are used by others that suites their needs like companies from Toronto, Tokyo or even for promotion of torrent sites.
As it is nice to have such a rainbow to choose from for your website it is also a possible threat for people because criminals use this variety for their own good including stealing users' banking information.
The problem now is that any person can register a domain with a similar name as any bank like www.bank-of-america.com just simply adding an additional letter or an article in between words . Even though, in this case it is highly unlikely that a person would make a spelling mistake like that while entering the address by hand he may not notice the same mistake when clicking a link in one of his trusted sites. The fraudulent link may look like www.bank-of-the-americ.com or www.barchlays.co.uk.
Below there is a real example of a phishing scheme: an email has been sent asking the client to click the link to the 'bank's' website where he or she would have to enter personal and banking information which would help the criminals to steal person's money. 
It seems that talks have been begun to create a domain *.bank that would be given exclusively to banks. This would make a lot harder for criminals to steal personal details from people and lead to a safer online banking.
It is estimated that approximately 10,000 *.bank domains would be registered which allows to monitor the domains more easily.
It would take a few years until the banks of the world would change to this domain. Probably, even more time until people would start trusting these domains. But this will be a great way for increasing security of online banking. Moreover, it is essential in order to keep up with increasing amounts of malware developers and their new ways of stealing personal details of other people.
Remember, never open emails from unknown people or companies and think carefully before entering your personal details in any website. If you do not know for sure whether to trust some particular website use any of the search engines like google.com or bing.com to prove the liability of those websites.
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