ANNOUNCER: Jessica Markovitz from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania asks: How safe is online banking?</s>ARI SCHWARTZ, ASSOC. DIRECTOR, CTR. FOR DEMOCRACY AND TECHNOLOGY: Well, Jessica, banking on-line -- sometimes some of the banks have made the process very secure and very private, and made sure that your information as it's flowing across the wires is secure. The first thing that you should really do is look for the privacy policy on your bank's web site, and try and read that policy. Some of that banks in the study that we did, we found really made the information very clear to users, made sure that users really controlled their information, and made sure that they understood that. If you have doubts about that, you should be suspicious. You should ask the bank what the policy means. The second thing to look for is how secure the information is traveling over the wires. You can look down at the bottom of the browser and you can see a lock. Then you know when you are inputting financial information over the web, that it's being securely transmitted. The most important thing to remember, however, is that it's really up to the banks to make sure that you trust them.
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