most of us place our savings in banks and enjoy their services with complaints but still continue to rely on them. however there was disscussion about why should we use banks?
arent we being tricked by advertisment and guided soley on others behaivour. just because its more common to use banks does it mean we should?
if you think about it, which is better placing your money in your home or in someone else's care? how safe is your money in banks?
there was this topic on yahoo today that made me want to disscuss bank security and why we use it in the first place: here's the main article
"""" A hacker has discovered a way to force ATMs to disgorge their cash by hijacking the computers inside them.The attacks demonstrated Wednesday targeted standalone ATMs. But they could potentially be used against the ATMs operated by mainstream banks.Criminals have long known that ATMs aren't tamperproof. There are many types of attacks in use today, ranging from sophisticated to foolhardy: installing fake card readers to steal card numbers, hiding tiny surveillance cameras to capture PIN codes, covering the dispensing slot to intercept money and even hauling the ATMs away with trucks in hopes of cracking them open later.Computer hacker Barnaby Jack spent two years tinkering in his Silicon Valley apartment with ATMs he bought online. These were standalone machines, the type seen in front of convenience stores, rather than the ones in bank branches. His goal was to find ways to take control of ATMs by exploiting weaknesses in the computers that run the machines.He showed off his results here at the Black Hat conference, an annual gathering devoted to exposing the latest computer-security vulnerabilities.""""
we know the banks and ATMs aren't safe, i personally got robbed by them and i'm sure others did aswell so what's the use of relying on them?
The guy who did that had thousands of dollars of resources and spent at least two years hacking away at standalone ATM machines that he bought himself specifically for that purpose. The conference he reported at was one that seeks to improve security - and to improve security, you have to identify the holes in it. If anything, it's a good sign that things are getting better.
I don't see any alternatives that wouldn't make your money more vulnerable. Keeping it in a physical location like your home doesn't do any good, since it can be stolen or lost in an emergency situation like a flood or earthquake. Keeping it in multiple physical locations would require you to check on each stash, wasting time and money. Not to mention that with inflation, the longer any amount of money sits there, the less worth it has.
Banks provide security, ease of mind, and ease of general convenience - and as long as someone using their services is aware of the penalty fees the bank can charge, and avoids them, the service is largely free. If a situation like the Great Depression happens again, at least as far as the banks being overwhelmed by people trying to get their money all at once goes, we're a lot better prepared these days for that since we've already been through that sort of problem. And since money can be stored essentially as electronic numbers, it doesn't really matter where you store it - so you could have multiple accounts at different banks so that even if one bank breaks, then you still have other places to keep it at.
I think it's worth a look to see if there are alternatives; we can't just rely on traditional banking methods to suit everyone. But I don't see any reason to let something like this shake our faith in banking as a system. It's certainly a lot easier to live the modern mobile lifestyle with their help.
Stop using ATMs if it bothers you. Go into a shop and ask for cashback with your packet of sweets or whatever, or ask at the bank desk. It's a much safer way of doing it.
And banks are much much more secure than pretty much any other way short of installing a two foot thick fireproof safe in your home.
