Banking while abroad

Make sure it is 90 days and not three months. There is a very small amount of risk that using a hotels wifi could be compromised but there is little that you can do about it. Most of the financial web sites have good security set ups with security questions, log ons, etc., that I think the risk is very small. We have been using web paying sites in Europe for the last couple of years with no problems. If you are not doing so now, I would start paying on line so that you know how the systems work. We are setting up for some long time travel. I don't, in general, like the auto debit programs especially with banks. So, we have set several local accounts to charge directly to a credit card. Provides a bit more protection and reduces the number of individual invoices that have to be handled. Second, the credit card is set to provide email notification of any charges via the internet, phone, or autopay. That gives more notice should that credit card be compromised in some way. If concerned about access to your checking account, you can set it so you can only view the transactions and cannot transfer money from the account. The payment transfer come via the credit card company.

I pay bills, transfer money between accounts, etc., while in Europe all the time without a thought. I carry my own netbook. As the previous poster noted, banks and other entities use the same secure systems when you access them from abroad as they do when you access them in the US.

Thank you Frank. Yes, we are aware of the 90 day limit. We do use online banking now and are familiar with how it works but we have always been careful to not access this info while traveling. However, given that we will be away for a longer period of time, we cannot avoid it. It is good to know that you have not had an issue with this. We will be staying at some hotels but much of our lodging will be through renting apartments or rooms etc. Thanks again for your reply. Lucyann

We have had all our bill on automatic bill pay for about four or five years, all except two local ones. You can arrange this with the individual companies you pay bills to. Even our credit cards are done this way. We have never had a problem of any kind. When we started we began with two bills. When there was no problem with them we added two more, and so on. We use WiFi extensively when overseas via an iPod Touch. That's the only electronic device we take. So far every problem that has some up, and they are very few, while we have been traveling have been taken care of using email through WiFi connections. Its perfectly safe. If you are going to take another electronic device I would suggest a iPad Mini. The full size one is too large and heavy. We will be getting one for our next journey. The key pad on the Touch is too small for my wife to use easily because of arthritis.

Lucyann,

I tend to travel for periods of one to two months, and my usual method is to pre-program bill payments and account transfers using my credit union electronic banking website. So far that's worked well, and I can enjoy the trip knowing that the payments will be made on time.

If I need to occasionally access the banking website during trips, I use my Netbook and hotel Wi-Fi. However I try to minimize that as there is a slight risk of Wi-Fi signals being intercepted. For the past few years, I've also had the option of using my iPhone via the cellular data network (NOT Wi-Fi). I've been told that's more secure, as the signals are encrypted.

Happy travels!

Even in the unlikely event that some bad guy did get a hold of your password, there isn't much they could with it. The online systems I use only allow me to view activity, transfer funds between checking and savings and pay bills. They couldn't take money out even if they wanted to.

Michael, I have one question to your comment. If a bad guy gained access to your banking account could he not transfer funds to his account somewhere or pay a fake bill? That is my concern and is why I only pay credit cards via the credit card web site. The thought is that if they gain access to the credit card account all they could do is transfer more money to the credit card account. I have set the bank accounts from the computer as view only. Am I missing something?

I wish I had a little more technical assurance on these issues, but I think that widespread fears about WiFi security are almost completely eliminated while we are talking about end-to-end encryption. In that kind of conversation (when you see the little padlock in your web browser) only the U.S. National Security Agency has any hope of looking at your banking data. Even if a "Rumainian hacker" has penetrated the hotel's network, all he will see is a fully-encrypted stream of data from your laptop or tablet.

Can anyone refute my observation, beyond the Snopes-like "a cousin of my best-friend's personal trainer had her identity stolen by .... "?

The issue that hasn't been explicitly raised in this thread is whether the Big Banks pay attention to whether the IP address is out-of-the-country. On TripAdvisor newsboards, people abroad often report difficulty buying sports and theater tickets from websites that simply reject transactions that are outside the U.S.

"If a bad guy gained access to your banking account could he not
transfer funds to his account somewhere or pay a fake bill?"

In order to initiate a wire transfer or bill paying transaction on the site I use requires several extra security steps like a telephone confirmation from your home phone. But if it's any consolation when bad guys do get a hold of accounts like paypal, the most the ever steal is like $50. Any more usually sets off alarms at the banks, and the will usually freeze the account until they can contact you.

"Can anyone refute my observation"

Your assumption is correct when you see the encryption icon on your browser light-up it's secure end to end even when it pass through wifi.

I was reading an interview with the head of paypal a while back and she said the single most important thing you can do to protect one self against hacking is to make sure the passwords to your email accounts are completely different from other passwords, and make sure your browser used always updated. A shocking number of people access sites like paypal with browsers that haven't been updated for three years!

Frank, the way it works at my credit union is that the only accounts I can transfer money between are those I set up in advance. And I can't even transfer money to my own daughter's account online because my name is not on that account (I could if I set it up in advance with the credit union, but that requires a personal visit to the credit union.) I have a couple of bills set up for automatic bill pay, but those were set up through the credit card sites, not through the credit union site. I don't use my credit union's bill pay service because the payments are not electronic.