Guarding online banking

An image of the PINsentry tool

Apparently at the end of this month I’ll be sent a small tool to make my online banking more secure. It’s called PINsentry. As far as I, as a selfish user, can see it’s actually designed to make my online banking experience slower and limit it to one location at a time (unless I want to drag it around with me at all times).

The website does actually provide a list of FAQs but for some inexplicable reason it’s Flash-based so I can’t actually link to the one which says that if I don’t have my reader with me I can view my accounts and nothing more.

I’ll save any further comment until I’ve received it, but at the moment I’m not feeling particularly generous.

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4 thoughts on “Guarding online banking”

  1. The Flash-based “page” – presumably so they can fade text in and out like a pro – just proves to me how much Barclays don’t get it at all when it comes to customers/users.

    Presumably the warnings that it gives you right at the bottom of the “common questions” page (I’d cut and paste, but… hnnng) are to prevent social engineering attacks? If that’s the case, isn’t this just another level of perception of security? I can see it would help prevent ongoing or delayed fraud, but does it prevent live man-in-the-middle relay attacks?

    Kind of hoping they send me one now, just to see what it’s like…

  2. You get one free, and then it’s £6 for each one after that. The size is a problem – if it was on my keychain I’d probably be less bothered.

    The Barclay’s Q&A on this is just a disaster – on the front page there’s a list of questions but they’re not clickable to their answers, just a link for “see the answers to these questions!” and then those questions aren’t the first thing on the page. And then it’s in Flash. Rubbish.

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