"anoop" <ghanwani[at]gmail.com> writes:

- quote -

ING Direct recently changed their login page so that you
cannot enter your PIN using the digit keys even if you
*want* to - they put up a randomized graphic and you can
point-and-click or you can use the letter keys they
show which map to your digits - and which map changes every
time you use it. Frankly, for me on my own computer, this
is annoying. If using some stranger's machine, though, it's
pretty spiffy.

- quote -

That gets one lots of things - various banks, credit cards, etc.
I don't think it gets one one's utility bills and such, though.

A much more complete solution - not really for managing
investments (ie. rebalancing a portfolio) - but for bill payment
and cash management - might be something like Paytrust.com
where you have your bills sent to *them* and you then see
and pay them all online. Similarly, MyCheckFree.com does
the same kind of aggregation. There used to be one or two others,
but I think Paytrust.com swallowed up one of them. Paytrust
is owned by Intuit, I think, and MyCheckFree is owned, of
course, by CheckFree (who process *loads* of electronic
transactions as the back-end for lots of the electronic
bill-payment systems).

- quote -

I believe that ETrade offers SecurIDs. As far as I know,
neither Fidelity nor the above-mentioned payment systems
offer them, though. That's too bad - PayTrust or MyCheckFree
plus a SecurID would probably be a perfect solution for the
original poster.

I think ETrade offers the aggregation of other financial
accounts like Fidelity (and Vanguard and a whole bunch of
other places) do. Worth a look.

A bit of terminology:

"Bill Presentment" - what PayTrust and MyCheckFree do -
they get your bills, show them to you and let you pay them.
"Bill Payment" - what nearly every checking account and
brokerage now do - lets you make online payments
"Aggregation" - most brokerages now, too - they pull
balance and maybe recent transaction data from other
financial services to show you - and maybe let you
make transfers between them.

(that's my quick and dirty summary - more details from
folks would be welcome! I'm also very curious if anyone
here has any actual experience with any of the bill presentmen
companies)


--
Plain Bread alone for e-mail, thanks. The rest gets trashed.
No HTML in E-Mail! -- http://www.expita.com/nomime.html
Are you posting responses that are easy for others to follow?
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting

Elizabeth Richardson wrote:

- quote -

Or go to cash. How bad can that hurt for four months?

-Will

<dynamorph[at]hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1130253343.569948.68440[at]g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
- quote -

Well, certainly, if you decide to time the market rather than investing for
the long-term, you have a problem with a 4 month holiday. I would suggest
you either adjust your strategy to a long-term time horizon, and stop timing
the market, or stay home.

Elizabeth Richardson

Hi Folks,

I don't see an easy way to realign my investments such that
I can just ignore them for 4 months ... given the volatility
of the stock market and currencies. It is a long holiday and
I don't mind checking things while I am away. I think the
volatility is caused by too many traders wanting to make a
quick buck buying and selling all the time, and I wish they
would get real jobs so that the rest of us who invest for
retirement could count on a normal, gradual rate of growth.

Thks,

--
Jim


Tad Borek wrote:
- quote -

anoop wrote:

- quote -

E-Trade offers an RSA keyfob that does this (I believe with no charge).
This may have been what the OP was referring to as a USB key, but I'll
repeat it here just in case. I use other RSA keyfobs (not E-Trade's)
all the time and they work great. Your password changes at short time
intervals (like every 60 or 90 seconds). One of mine even uses a four
digit PIN appended to the front of your password so that even if a bad
guy gets your username and keyfob, he would still need the PIN to get to
your account. Another I have used looks like one of those credit card
calculators. It requires you to enter a 4 digit PIN into the unit and
then it displays your password which is only good for 60 seconds or so.
The fun part is that any 4 digit number will cause a "password" to
appear (just not the right one unless the correct PIN is used), so the
bad guys can't tell if the password is valid or not.

-Will

If your home or work computers is always online (corporate firewalls and dynamic
IP can cause problems - check out www.dyndns.org - you can then connect using
blah.dyndns.org instead of IP address) - use VNC (www.tightvnc.com) to connect
to them and save all your passwords there so you dont enter it on the computer
you are using.

dynamorph[at]hotmail.com wrote:
- quote -

dynamorph[at]hotmail.com wrote:
- quote -

Jim,

I know you didn't ask this, but As you said once in a lifetime 4 month
holiday and I hope you have many more to come, do you really have to be
Looking, monitoring your finances while on vacation, there got to be a
way where you can just PARK everything and enjoy once in a lifetime
holiday, I do, not for 4 months, but I do take 4-6 weeks off every two
to three years and travel oversees.

Abid


======================================= MODERATOR'S COMMENT:
Please trim the post to which you are responding. "Trim" means that except for a few lines to add context, the previous post is deleted.

dynamorph[at]hotmail.com wrote:
- quote -

This isn't the question you asked but do you really think your
investments will need any looking-at over a 4-month period? That isn't
really all that long.

Is one option just realigning things a bit so you can have your holiday
in peace?

-Tad

I've never used it, but the Quicken program allows you to have a
duplicate set of Quicken records stored on the Intuit server. I don't
think they charge for this service. You can sync up and down between
your PC and the server, using a secure, encrypted browser connection.
And the server will update your security prices if you wish. The link
is https://quicken.intuit.com/commerce/.../account.jhtml

Note the (s) in https - this is what tells you that it is an encrypted
connection, using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). But you would still need
to watch out for key loggers.

John Cowart

dynamorph[at]hotmail.com wrote:
- quote -

There is a way to defeat keyloggers: use the mouse to input the
username and passwords. There are various ways to do this, depending on
what applications will be available to you on an internet cafe:

1. Run "charmap.exe". Double click on each character to input the text.
Then copy and paste into browser.

2. For numeric passwords, you can simply use the calculator. Then copy
and paste.

3. Use a "virtual keyboard" such as the one here to input the text.
Copy and paste.
http://imtranslator.net/keyboard.asp

4. If all else fails, you can create your own "virtual keyboard". Open
notepad and type in "abc...xyz1234567890". Copy and paste each letter
to form the text.

Of course, there is no 100% secure method, but this will pretty much
defeat keyloggers since you're not typing any keystrokes. The downside
of this is that your password will be visible on the screen as you're
inputting it. You might want to use your hand to cover it, or move part
of the window off the edge of the screen.

dynamorph[at]hotmail.com wrote:

- quote -

I would be wary about accessing sensitive information at internet
cafes because of things like keyboard loggers that may be installed.
These log every keystroke.

- quote -

Many banks and brokerages provide a "one view" service for free
where you can aggregate the information from multiple financial
institutions in one place. For example, Fidelity has something
called "Full View."
http://tinyurl.com/779fr
I doubt you will find someone that will email the information
to you.

- quote -

Many corporate VPNs have something called a SecureID where you
use a card to generate a password and use that password. However,
this requires support at the server end so I doubt it would be
widely available.

- quote -

I think your best bet would be to carry your own computer with you
and conduct sensitive business using that machine only. Maybe you
could try to find a smaller, lighter machine for this. Something
like the Nokia Internet Tablet would be ideal if it was available
http://europe.nokia.com/nokia/0,,75023,00.html.

Anoop

dynamorph[at]hotmail.com wrote:
- quote -

I spent a year traveling in Mexico and Central America in 2002 and I
regulary accessed all my accounts over the internet from cyber cafes
without any problems. If I was going to do it again today, I would
install portable firefox
(http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/portable_firefox/) on a keyring USB
drive and use that browser to access all my accounts. That would
reduce the risk of having your passwords logged a bit, plus it would
allow you to have access to all your bookmarks wherever you go.

Andy

I am taking a once in a lifetime 4 month holiday. I'll
have net access only through internet cafes (or possibly
a laptop). I have various asset classes that I need to manage
while I am away (stocks, funds, currencies, etc.).
I would rather not think about it for 4 months, but because
of volatility and changing environments I don't see how that
is possible. (any ideas?)

I am worried about logging in to various accounts, especially
from internet cafes overseas.

First, I wonder if there is a service that can aggregate financial
information from various sources (bank, brokerage, etc) and perhaps
email an encrypted version to me on a regular basis? Or at least
have it aggregated in a single web page. Then I could check
all my accounts without logging in to any of them and exposing
my password. I would log in only when I need to make a transaction.

Next, what is a good way to manage important passwords in environments
where they might be compromised and need to be changed frequently?
I know some banks offer one-off lists of passwords, but that would
get too complicated for me. Some companies (ETrade) have a secure USB
key. Perhaps there is some software that will change passwords
automatically
at regular intervals?

Finally, I may have to tote along a laptop. But 5-7 lbs is a lot when
you are
carrying it around every day for 4 months, and wireless coverage is
spotty. Or I may try out Knoppix linux, but I'd have to boot into that
all the time, and it won't stop hardware keyloggers anyhow. Does anyone
have a better idea? Thanks,

--
Jim