Banking on Mobile Just Became More Secure

Oh how things change radically and quickly in technology. Just a few years ago security experts thought you would be out of your mind to access an online bank account from a mobile phone.

This is because "back in the day" mobile Web browsers hid URLs, making it easy for cybercriminals to impersonate banking sites. The Wireless Application Protocol mobile-Web standard offered limited security. Even after the introduction of smartphones, banks own stand-alone apps were often poorly designed.

"We've seen a few examples where it became clear the mobile finance apps didn't quite receive the same level of security scrutiny as their traditional counterparts," Roel Schouwenberg, a senior researcher at Kaspersky Lab, stated in a TechNewsDaily article as recently as May 2012.

The tide has now turned. Experts now say mobile devices may actually be safer to use than computers for online banking, in part because malicious software can be downloaded to a computer without a user knowing it.