Domain names of banks’ websites have been changed
Next time you go to open your bank’s website, stop for a moment. If your fingers are going to type sbi.com or hdfcbank.com as a habit, then this news is most important for you and your money. The face of online banking in the country has completely changed. After a big and strict decision of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), almost all the big and small banks of the country including State Bank of India (SBI), HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank have changed their website address (Domain Name). This change is the biggest step taken so far to protect your hard-earned money from cyber fraudsters.
The game of .com and .in is over
What happened that banks had to change their old and well-known websites? The direct answer to this is the increasing cases of ‘phishing’. Phishing is a method of cyber fraud in which criminals trap you by creating a fake website that looks exactly like your bank’s.
Till now, what used to happen was that fraudsters would create a fake website looking like your bank, say ‘mybank.com’, whose address would be something like ‘mybank.co.in’ or mybank-online.com’. These fake websites were exactly like the real ones in appearance, color and logo. Criminals would send you an SMS or email saying ‘Your account has been blocked’, ‘Your KYC has expired’ or ‘You have won a lottery of Rs 50,000.’ A link was given in this message.
As soon as a customer clicks on that link out of panic or greed, he reaches the fake website instead of the real one. There he would enter his real username, password and OTP, thinking that he was completing his work. But in reality, all this confidential information would reach the fraudsters and in the blink of an eye they would wipe out your account. Since ‘.com’ or ‘.in’ domains could be easily purchased by anyone, it was becoming difficult to stop these criminals.
How will the new ‘Suraksha Kavach’ save you?
RBI has implemented ‘.bank.in’ domain to break this trap of fraud. This is not a simple domain that anyone can buy from the internet. Domains like ‘.com’, ‘.in’ or ‘.org’ (called TLDs) can be easily registered by any person or company.
But ‘.bank.in’ is like a ‘super secure’ or rather a ‘high-security zone’. To get this domain, banks have to go through a very stringent verification process. This domain is allotted only to those financial institutions which have received direct approval from the Reserve Bank of India and which fulfill all its conditions.
This means that now no fraudster or cyber criminal will be able to create any fake website similar to the name ‘.bank.in’. This domain in itself is a guarantee, an identity card that you are on a genuine, verified and secure banking portal. This is just like ‘gov.in’ or ‘nic.in’ is a firm identity for government websites in India. Now whenever you see ‘.bank.in’ on any bank’s website, you can be rest assured to a great extent.