I will be in Paris for just over a month in an apartment with no internet access. I had intended to bring my Powerbook and do my online banking over there, but I'm wondering if there is any way to do that safely. It sounds like Internet cafes are not a good idea. Any words of wisdom?

Christine

As long as there is no one looking over your shoulder while you type your passwords, and you have your firewall on, and your file sharing off, I wouldn't really worry.

The banks have a lot of security on their sites, and the main thing you would have to worry about, I think, would be someone stealing your password. As far as I am aware, the main concern here, if you have good security on your computer and are using a reputable Internet access point, is the possibility of keylogging hackers. But it's my understanding that this generally requires a hack that would surreptiously install malicious software on your computer. I have not heard of any way to do that on a Mac that is properly set up with a password. You can't install any new software on a Mac unless you know the admin password.

Another layer of security, if you want to go this far, and are still concerned about possible keylogging, is to copy and paste in your passwords rather than typing them directly. Here is a Mac shareware program that stores your passwords, log-ins, etc, in encrypted form. So you can copy and paste them from its window into your browser without ever typing them directly.

If you have to do it, change your online banking password while in Paris and change it again when you get back

Bill