How to Keep Your Digital Banking Secure

Staying Safe in a Digital World

In today’s digital world, nearly everything can be done online, including your banking! This being the case, Prevail Bank wants to help keep your accounts safe while enjoying the convenience of our Digital Banking services.

Here are a few tips we recommend to help keep your Digital Banking accounts safe and secure.

Verify you’re using the correct Mobile Banking app

First and foremost, be sure that you are using the correct Prevail Mobile Banking app. If your app looks like our app pictured below, that’s a good first step.

Scammers can create phony apps that seem to be legitimate to trick users into entering their credentials on their fake app. To avoid this, use the direct links from our website to access your Online Banking account, and to download our Mobile Banking app.

To help keep your Prevail Bank debit card transactions safe and secure, our free Prevail Mobile Banking app has a new card manager platform called "Cards"! This new and intuitive platform helps your digital banking work for you. Providing you all the convenient features you're used to while offering several beneficial financial management tools for free. Learn more below.

Keep your Digital Banking off of public Wi-Fi sources

Free is hard to pass up, especially when it’s free Wi-Fi. When it comes to Online or Mobile Banking, take a pass on the free public Wi-Fi. Wireless public internet connections are easy targets for hackers to intercept. While public Wi-Fi may be safe for casual web browsing, we recommend sticking to your private, secure Wi-Fi, or your mobile phone’s data connection.

Tip: make sure the Online Banking website you are using has a secure connection. To check for this, make sure that the URL bar includes a lock icon, like the one pictured below.

Update your Digital Banking passwords

This is the easiest safety precaution you can take for all your digital accounts, not only Digital Banking. If you have not changed your Digital Banking password recently, now’s the time. Consider the following tips when creating a new password:

• Use a complex combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters
• Make sure that your password is at least 8 characters long

Avoid passwords similar to your name, such as Pr3v@ilB@nk, as these are easily guessed

Track your banking activity using Alerts

It’s important to stay up to date with the activity on your bank accounts. Prevail Digital Banking offers a number of useful alerts for your banking accounts. Receive alerts when there is a failed login attempt on your account, when you go over your spending limit, when a check clears, and much more.

Watch out for phishing scams

Phishing is the fraudulent practice where scammers pretend to be from reputable companies to influence you to reveal personal information, such as your passwords, card numbers, birth date, etc.

A phishing scam can occur through emails, texts, or calls that seem to be from companies or people you know, but they’re actually from scammers. They want you to click on a link or share personal information (like a password or social security number) so that they can use that information to steal your money or identity, or your money and identity.

How to tell if it’s a phishing scam

• Email – Check suspicious emails for signs of a scam. If your email asks for personal information, it’s a scam.
• Text – If you receive a text saying your card is locked and it directs you to call, it’s a scam. Or if you receive a text asking you to sign into your bank account or provide your personal information, it’s a scam.
• Phone Call – If you didn’t expect a call from your bank and they ask for personal information, it could be a scam. Hang up and call your bank yourself to confirm.

Prevail Bank will never call, text, or email you asking for your private information. Always call the bank to verify any suspicious contact regarding your Prevail accounts and debit cards.

Let Prevail Bank help

For additional information regarding digital banking security, please refer to the original article this post was inspired by.