Post - F-Secure suggests .safe domain names to enable safer online banking

-HAL- · March 30th, 2007

Quote:

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the organization responsible for the global coordination of the Internet’s system of unique identifiers, should introduce a .safe domain name to be used by registered banks and other financial organizations, according to F-Secure.

According to APACS, the UK payments association, 17 million people now bank via the Internet in the UK and that figure is set to rise in the next few years (APACS - The way we pay bills report, February 2007). The trend is similar in other countries. But as the number of Internet bankers rise, so too does the amount of people committing fraud. Compared to the first six months of 2005, online banking fraud rose by 55 per cent in 2006 (APACS - Press Release - Latest figures show UK card fraud losses continue to decline in first six months of 2006, November 2006).

If ICANN introduced a .safe domain (or .sure or .bank), which could only be used by registered financial institutions, it would allow security providers to create better software to protect the public, according to F-Secure. It would be similar to other top level domain names such as .uk and .gov.

"While a .safe domain name won’t prevent phishing attacks, it will help banks and security providers to keep their customers safe, said Mikko Hyppönen, Chief Research Officer at F-Secure. "Banks need to take on some of the responsibility for protecting their customers and using a secure domain name such as .safe will give customers the reassurance they need when banking online."

http://www.f-secure.com/f-secure/pre...329_1_eng.html

It sounds like it could be a good idea to create a .safe or .bank Top-level domain for banks only to keep scam, spam and other fishy sites away, but it could also create a false sense of security for the "general crowd" who knows nothing about phising etc..