URLpirates: BMO, TD you both get an F for your password system... Royal Bank you get a A relative to them..

I am a web geek.. I spend most of my time online as I have no life.. one of the things that has always been an interest to me is passwords, our secret key to our information online. I am sure many a company struggles with the danger of allowing people to access information online.. many a bank does which is why I find it odd that in general my gmail password is mathimatically harder to hack than my online banking account.. my facebook is more secure, my youtube is more secure...

Now I know you are going to say huh... well lets just look at 3 banks

BMO (Bank of Montreal) : 6 numbers or letters.. that is right 6, just 6... I said are you fuckin kidding me to the guy on the phone.. he said no.. I can I trust my money to your bank when you have the worst password system I have ever seen in my life.. 6.. to get a YouTube account I need at least 8 characters and they even let me use the funky $%##@ letters...

That means basically a computer program built to hack my account only has to look at passwords that contain numbers and letters, both lower case and upcase 6 characters long..

Maybe you can do that math.. how many possible passwords could there be... well a lot less than TD

TD: Truth is they are not much better..5-8 letter or numbers, upper or lower.. ok a bit better...but still I can't even get a password on YouTube unless I have 8 characters and in most cases unlike TD it will tell me the password is weak if I used a true word...

again this means that in terms of the password and I am only talking about the password a computer program simply has to worry about number letter combinations in lower and upper that are between 5-8 characters long..

And when I pointed this out to TD they said your money is guarenteed... I have to laugh at this because all our money in banks is guarenteed.. at least up to some certain amount.. just do you want to have your identity stolen because all yoru finacial information is contained in your bank account...

Royal Bank: Finally I came accross a bank that just gets it.. and I am going to have to change my account to them.. 8-32 number letter characters.. now it is not perfect because it should allow for special characters but there are millions of more possible password choices with a Royal Bank online password system than with TD and BMO...

Now I know you will say it doesn't matter but it really does because online fraud is more profitable than drugs.. it is a billion dollar business. These banks tell us to be carefull all the time but when they don't at least try to give us the proper tools which is a modern password system isn't it a bit hypocrytical?

To me... TD and BMO need to get there act together and the reason they don't is because it would require work.. all banks likely use an old DOS system for their number crunching because the older stuff is very secure.. they all likely have layered security and I am not making any comments on that..

If I was a math person and maybe you are I would go through and say how many possible passwords for each... common sense tells me that Royal Bank is a better password system.. and should tell you.. how secure is your money..

These are the questions we should ask... and so take a look, call your bank and leave a comment if yours is different.. go to my app at http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=15039045275 and go to urlsmack, search for your bank via the url (bmo.com) and leave a suggestion.. which is why I created cybersweetness because it is not only up to us to make the internet secure.. it is up to these big corporations to at least have a password system as secure as YouTube, Facebook, GMAIL.. after all it is our money.. and the last thing I want is to go on a date and have my card decline because someone stole all my money... sure I will get it back but I ain't getting laid that night..

This is Gebadia Smith at http://urlpirates.com did you know urlpirates.com without the www is called a naked URL... :)

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