Almost 60 per cent of Britons rely on the Internet to do their banking, according to new research commissioned by the Alliance and Leicester bank.
Surveying around 2,400 people, the study found that just under one-third (29 per cent) use Internet banking between once and twice per week, with just over one in 10 (12 per cent) logging on to their bank everyday
The YouGov survey revealed that there’s been a 63 per cent rise in people managing their bank accounts online since 2003, with balance checks proving the most popular activity (96 per cent) followed by money transfers for payments (76 per cent).
It seems that people still prefer to sort out complex problems by visiting the bank, and of those folks who choose to avoid online banking, over a fifth (21 per cent) said they preferred to deal with people face to face, with 13 per cent expressing concerns about security.
With this in mind, the Alliance & Leicester has announced that it will become the first UK high street bank to give all its customers two-factor authentication technology.
Designed to cut down on identity theft and online fraud, the two-factor authentication compels users to provides two means of identification.
This usually involves something that has been memorised by the user (like a password or special code) along with a physical device that generates random numbers or code.
With this security double whammy, hackers who have managed to capture the first pass code should be unlikely to proceed because the customer then needs to generate a new code to authorise online transactions.
The authentication technology will also be used to prove the authenticity of a bank’s Web site, and this should help clamp down on phishing sites.
The bank hasn’t revealed any further details yet, although it has said that the initiative would be a “simple and robust way” for customers to be confident that “their data online is safe from criminals.”
Other banks are also jumping on the security bandwagon, with Barclays running a new chip card reader trial involving 5,000 customers and staff, while Lloyds TSB is close to completing an exhaustive six-month test of a keyring type device.
The trial involved 30,000 UK online customers, with Lloyds TSB declaring itself well chuffed with the initial findings, which produced a healthy 78 per cent adoption rate amongst users.
Around 95 per cent of people using the device said they found it easy to use with the bank claiming a 100 per cent success rate in reduction of fraud among users.
Despite its success, Lloyds said that the current trial was more about testing consumer response to the technology, and it’s more interested in working to meet banking industry group Apacs’ universal security standard that will eventually be used by all banks.
As more banking activity goes online, the face of High Streets looks set to change forever, with the Economic and Social Research Council recently concluding that the rise of Internet and phone banking has led to more branches being closed.
The story we’ve 
The problem is that BT staffers are unhappy at being bundled in with the sale and have worries that long term they could see a reduction in the conditions they enjoy. One of their unions, the CWU, has now after balloting, threatened strike action, hoping to change BT’s management’s attitude to those described as ‘in scope’ by the potential deal.
Now to us here at Digital Lifestyles, this threatened action seems to have a bit of a King Canute/70’s vibe about it. The truth of the matter, is that the competitive landscape has changed in telecommunications and broadcasting. BT is answerable to their city shareholders, and a move to tackle some of the entrenched attitudes within the company’s workforce might be looked on favourably by the number crunchers around the London stock exchange.
Big glasses-toting Buggles sang about ‘Video Killing The Radio Star’ back in 1979, but new figures from Ofcom suggest that the while Internet may not exactly be killing TV, it’s certainly giving it a bit of a duffing behind the bike sheds.
Industry pundits are collaring the Internet as the reason for this decline, along with DVDs and gaming.
Consumer broadband continues its exponential growth, exploding from zero to 10 million connections in just over seven years, with some 70,000 new connections being added per week.
Islington’s free WiFi cloud to extended well beyond the initial Technology Mile.
According to a new survey from Virgin Mobile, mobile telephone text messaging has become so popular in the UK that millions are complaining of injuries to their thumbs and fingers.
Despite the agony, it seems that Brits are prepared to go through the pain barrier to keep bashing out their texts, with more than twelve per cent admitting to sending 20 text messages a day – with a seriously obsessed ten per cent blasting out as many as 100 texts a day!
Designed to highlight the very real problems of RSI, Virgin have sponsored a very useful site, 
As a recent sufferer of RSI (brought on by long hours sweating over a hot Logitech as I try to bring you, dear reader, the latest stories), I strongly recommend you try out some of the exercises. 
Ofcom has just announced another consultation on Voice over IP (VoIP) use in the UK as a follow up to their last, which they called New Voice Services: A consultation and interim guidance, and released on 6 September 2004.
The City of London is to get blanket Wi-Fi, with city slickers able to access the Web anywhere within London’s famous financial district, the Square Mile.
Unfortunately, unlike the free Wi-Fi service 
The move follows an announcement that The Cloud would be installing network hubs and rolling out WiFi in nine cities across Britain, including Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, Oxford and Liverpool.
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For the second time in a fortnight, coastguards have been scrambled after a digital TV box sent out a signal on a wavelength used by ships in distress.
An Ofcom spokesman explained that the faulty boxes are now being examined for malfunctioning components, adding: “Apparently any device capable of receiving a signal can also send a signal if it malfunctions. To the best of our knowledge these are the only two out of millions of Freeview users in the UK to have experienced this problem.”