Bankers Group Pushes Its Seal of Approval

But some question significance to consumers

By Maria Trombly

August 14, 2000 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - In the wake of a recent warning by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) about fake bank sites conning customers out of private information, the American Bankers Association (ABA) has launched a campaign to increase awareness of a seal of approval it says verifies which online banks are jake and which are fake.
But the SiteCertain seal is being used only by just over 300 banks out of about 10,000 in the country.
"I don't know that it means that much to customers," said Brooke Newcomb, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. "There's just too many seals of approval out there."
Newcomb said most consumers are still reluctant to go online for financial transactions and that the presence - or absence - of a seal isn't going to make a difference.
Britton & Koontz First National Bank in Natchez, Miss., has had the seal on its home page since the seal debuted a year and a half ago, but no customers have commented on it.
"I don't really know how much effect it has at this time," said the bank's president and CEO, Page Ogden. "But this kind of thing is going to become more and more important."
Banks are waking up to the increasing risk that their sites will be spoofed and their customers defrauded, according to Stephen Schutze, e-strategies director at the ABA in Washington. He said banks are signing up for certification in increasing numbers.
"Sometimes, it takes something like a warning from the OCC that says, 'Hey, there's bad guys out there trying to take your customers' money,' " Schutze said.
But according to analyst George Barto, an online banking expert at Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Group Inc., if spoofers were to mimic a bank site to con consumers, they could just as easily mimic the SiteCertain button.
"Even if the bank I was spoofing didn't have that certification, I would put it on," he said. "And I could not only spoof the button, I could spoof a Web page that looks exactly like the one that comes from the ABA. And since people don't know what that page looks like, it doesn't even have to look the same."

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