Randall's Ruminations

According to Bloomberg Business Week, ING is being forced to sell it’s online-only bank, ING Direct, “as part of a restructuring plan mandated by European regulators after the bank received state aid during the financial crisis.” One of the rumored buyers is Capital One. This saddens me deeply, as I have come to expect an excellent level of customer service from ING that I do not believe Capital One is capable of, and it is a tragic example of government intervention going too far.

If the sell does go through, I plan on closing my 6-year old account. I guess it’s time to start shopping for a new online savings bank.

Do you have a gmail account? Probably. Have you ever noticed the “last activity” bar at the bottom of the gmail page? It will tell you how many locations you are logged in from, based on IP address, and also the IP address from which your account was last accessed. Yesterday, a friend of mine received a warning pop-up from Google that his account had been accessed from China. If you are like me, your identity could be totally wrecked if someone hacked your Google account. I have confirmation e-mails with credit card information, back-ups of tax returns on google docs, and I use google contacts as my single point of contact maintenance. Furthermore, I use my gmail account as the primary account for most web services, which means it would be easy to use the “I forgot my password” functionality to hack my online banking, etc.

Luckily, there is a way to help keep your information safe, at least from external hackers. The article in the link was serendipitously posted yesterday on the Unclutterer blog I follow, and mentions Google’s two-point authentication, with a link to a page that will help you set it up. The service is just like the security tokens that generate a random number every 30 seconds that must be entered, along with your password, in order to access your account. This works great if you have a smart phone and can download the app that displays the generated codes, and ok if you have a regular cell phone that can receive text messages. And don’t worry about having to type in the code every time you check your e-mail on your phone - you can enter a special, one time password to authenticate that device.

If you have an iPhone, you should do this. It’s free! (Note: Does not work if you drop your iPhone in a river while hiking).

On a related note, I bought a new iPhone today, so I can once again receive all your calls and texts. Hit me up!