Banks love to promote their internet banking's security, but just how safe is it? Find out why Halifax and Abbey customers are most at risk



How safe is your internet banking? Online banking fraud nearly doubled in 2008.



A worrying £52.5m was stolen by sinister hackers tracking the movements of their prey, affecting one in four of all those banking online.  Some customers are still falling foul of 'phishing' schemes – emails that pretend to be from a bank and then direct customers to bogus websites where their passwords are stolen.  But more careful online bank customers are also suffering at the hands of underground hacking technology.

'Keylogging' – whereby a virus tracks every stroke of a password as it is entered – can breach the best of defences on personal computers, and is largely held responsible for the rise in online fraud.

For the ordinary web user, extra-thick internet firewalls and up-to-date anti-virus software is about as much as can be done to fend off this aggressive software.  But improving technology has helped the hackers past these barriers and, to make matters worse, many users still forget or disregard important steps like regular computer checks.



That means the onus falls on the banks to protect their vulnerable customers from internet keylogging rogues – and some are better at it than others.  Expert-led research at Which? Computing magazine showed that Halifax and Abbey internet customers are exposed to the greatest risk of having money stolen from their accounts, while Barclays led the way with its anti-fraud password controls.



Security loopholes - including password entry methods that are dangerously exposed to keyloggers, and unprotected money transfers once a user is logged in - had Abbey and Halifax firmly at bottom of the online security pile.



Barclays, meanwhile, excelled by using both its PINsentry device to generate a random password every time a user logs on, and by asking for more login information than other banks.



Some banks have also begun to use apparatus such as drop-down menus, making keylogging impossible, but this has not yet found its way onto either Abbey or Halifax's sites.



Of course, the flipside is that the once ultra-convenient days of internet banking with just a password are gone for many, replaced by carrying a card machine with keypad round and having to fill in a run of details for each transaction.