The other computer "cookie"

[Green Sub]

Banking online saved my butt last Friday.

Mrs. Green Sub is a cash manager for a Fortune 1000 company. She goes to the local branch near her office to get $5,400 out of their corporate account.

This bank allows one to swipe their ATM card for identification purposes. Just by coincidence I log on to the bank site later that morning. It usually is the first thing I do around 8:30, but for some reason it was 10:15 last Friday. The bank waives any account fees if you keep a minimum balance of $5,000, so we usually have around $6,000 in this account.

The account is at $200 plus change. OH MY GOD, I call the bank. No electronic transaction, this was a withdrawal at a branch and the money was GONE! So I go about the process of closing the account as suggested by the CSR and he also suggested I file a police report. It would take 3 business days for the bank to investigate.

I then call Mrs. Green Sub to tell her what had happened. She immediately tells me she withdrew $5,400 from the corporate account that morning and rushes back to the bank. Well you guessed it. The teller withdrew the funds from our personal account. Everything was patched up quickly, but if I had not checked the account that morning via online banking the account would have been trashed in a day or so.

And for what it's worth, we use the "My Portfolio" feature at this bank's web site and have a real time window to every transaction of all of our accounts, both at this bank and elsewhere. This even includes insurance policies, award points, and the like. I know it's scary to have all this data in one spot.

Well 2 years ago I caught a $3.00 transaction on a Master Card. It just didn't jive and I Googled the recipient. Yep, my card had been compromised and this was a test transaction and worse things were to follow. I can't tell you how nice the CSR was that I monitored my accounts so closely and notified them before any real damage was done.

BTW, if it wasn't for these Security Keys, I wouldn't trust just a username and password to protect this much information.