Experts say that banks tend to be more vulnerable to fraud and theft because they are balancing the dual demands of providing user-friendly Internet banking capabilities and securing their customers’ data. And hackers also are more likely to target financial institutions because that’s where the money is.

These experts are largely consultants from audit firms and I.T. consultancies paid by the banks and major financial institutions. But the serious, systemic, and largely untreatable vulnerabilities are not with the banks and financial institutions. They are client-side rather than server side.

The most serious vulnerability is with You, the user.

So what if the bank spends 100 million dollars on a fancy security infrastructure to prevent its systems from hacking?

You’re still going to access that system and your account from your PC. Are you a security expert? Probably not. Worse yet, you’re probably not even running a relatively secure operating system on your home PC like linux. Like 90% of the planet, you’re probably running Windows, that pathetic operating system that remains, after 25 years (the equivalent of several centuries in I.T. evolution) a notoriously inefficient, foolishly architectured, and dangerously insecure system.

Here is Microsoft’s take on security vulnerabilities: a security vulnerability “is a flaw in a product that makes it infeasible — even when using the product properly — to prevent an attacker from usurping privileges on the user’s system, … compromising data on it.” The translation of the preceding is: ‘a vulnerability is a flaw you can’t do anything about.’

Financial information is stolen in a number of ways, including

the physical theft of a wallet, checkbook, or credit card, theft of information from one’s home from friends, relatives, or in-home employees; phishing messages that con people into divulging information to fraudsters; hacks, viruses, as well as spyware on a PC or ATM machine. Even corrupt employees with access to your records can result in Identity Theft.

Proponents of internet banking argue that only by using the Internet can you get rid of the papers that addicts like to pull from your trash. Some studies have claimed that only a relatively small percentage of those who steal identity information do so over the Internet

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