Anti Phishing measures

Anti-phishing measures are being introduced by banks to prevent phishing attacks.

Recently I was doing a routine transfer of money from one of my accounts to another using ICICI’s Internet banking facility. Normally, the system asks for the transaction password to complete the money transfer. But this time, after entering the transaction password, the system showed me a weird screen. First, I thought ….ah.. some new shit or an error, which is pretty common with ICICI’s online banking (yeah.. press the back button, you are doomed, press the reload button, you are thrown out!……..really painful). But, later I realised that this was a safety measure.

The system showed me a screen which asked me to enter some digits of my ATM card number. (the digits at position 4, 6 and 7 - again, I guess, its pretty much random).

That’s really good. If a phisher had actually got hold of my Internet banking userid and password, he or she wouldn’t be able to transfer the money out so easily!! Cool. One more point is, this is triggered only for transaction above a threshold amount.

Will have to wait and watch for how long this method to prevent phishing or protecting the bank account works. If the phishers manage to steal the ATM card number too, then…………….:)

Need more info on Anti-phishing at : http://www.antiphishing.org/

3 comments | June 7th, 2005 at 12:50pm