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As my cousin found out one night in Calgary, AB. When a couple of women got him drunk, took him outside where their boyfriends beat him down and forced his PIN number out of him... The bank used the fact that he gave them his pin as enough reason not to reimburse the losses.

Personally I think thats why they are doing it, likewise if a keylogger gets your PW/PIN and get into your banking you might be left footing the bill.

Most all resellers have a markup of ~3% just to accommodate credit card company fees. Those who pay with cash, are essentially ripped off. Those who use credit cards at least supposedly get the security/extra warranty/insurance/other services they provide.

One must keep a good eye on everything the financial institutions are doing,as every change is in their self-interest.

This is made worse by many banks issuing devices that can check a pin and can tell you if it is right or wrong. It even works with cards from other banks - I've tried it. This means you haven't even got the option of giving a false number. Granted three wrong numbers locks out the card, but if this were a Muslim gang you'd probably get the option of losing a tooth for the first wrong number, a finger for the second, and your head for the third.

In the UK there's also The Co-operative Bank, which I recommend. I moved my account there a few years ago since they have an ethical policy (no investing in things the membership don't like). I do everything online, and haven't asked for anything like a mortgage, loan etc, so I can't really comment on their customer service. It gets high ratings in surveys.

My bank has recently sent me a Chip & PIN Card Reader for use with their Online banking service.

IMHO their security was already good; you don't login with a simple username and password but have to answer one of several preset questions and pick digits from a PIN number and characters from your password (in other words you never transmit all of the information all at the same time). Now, however, if I want to make changes or transfer funds I have the additional security of using my bank card, at home, in their card reader.

Basically it works like this, I login to my online bank account as normal and when I try and make a change that needs further authentication the server generates a unique number. At this point I put my bank card in the card reader and authenticate with my PIN number, then I type in the unique number which the card reader uses to produce a new number. I enter the new number online and I've just proved I've physically got the bank card and PIN number for this account.

Sure, I can still be stupid and give phishers all sorts of information but now I also have to physically give them my bank card (and the reader).

Simple rule, if I didn't initiate contact with my bank then whoever I'm dealing with isn't getting any details from me at all.

Or they banks give out small card readers that the online shopper sticks their bank pass into, types in his pin and a one time code to yield a one-time key to confirm the transaction.
Wait....we've already got that! In some places anyway.

Indeed - the card reader from my bank-for-online-things (the UK's CoOperative Bank http://co-operativebank.co.uk/ ) is sitting under the table here.
Had it 3 months now ; still not had a reason to use it.

Ethical, kind people go bankrupt.

Not always, no. How about The Co-operative Bank or Cafedirect to name two off the top of my head. I'm sure I could find more if I could be bothered to look harder.

That's why I use the The Co-operative Bank

Bob

THE MYTH: After 1 January, the liability for card fraud losses switches from the banks to the cardholder.

THE TRUTH:
This is absolutely not the case. With the introduction of chip and PIN there is no change in liability for the cardholder. You will remain fully protected from the cost of card fraud and are covered under the Banking Code. From 1 January 2005 there is a shift in liability for some types of card fraud from banks to retailers, but this will not affect cardholders in any way.

Imagine if your checking account was suddenly cut in half, because the bank decided to be idealistic.

Just because a bank decides to be idealistic, doesn't mean it can't compete with the big names. Check out the Co-Op bank or, for you online junkies, their online partner.

It is possible to be innovative and still make your shareholders happy.

I'd be interested in hearing which other banks do or don't work with "alternative" browsers

Britain's Co-operative Bank works fine with Firefox. I've been using their online banking with Firefox et al since Phoenix 0.6.

Interestingly, in my experience of UK sites, it's .gov.uk sites that tend not to be standards-compliant (let's not mince words here - if sites won't work with more than one browser, it's because they're not attempting to comply with published, long-standing stardards).

• not supporting alternative browsers was losing roughly 10 per cent of possible visitors, which was particularly dangerous for a new banking service;
• not supporting alternative browsers was unethical.

It strikes me that the 'ethical lever' would be particularly powerful when charities are concerned.

We should try to lobby the Co-operartive Bank, to fix it's ethical policy so that it does not invest in immoral (proprietary) software companies, etc. :)