SAFETY IS OUR FOCUS

People's Bank endeavors to keep your online information safe and secure. In so doing, we employ electronic safeguards that comply with federal regulations.

YOUR RESPONSIBILITY

While People's works toward protecting the confidentiality of your online information, we can't do it alone. Just as in the real world, where you take steps to protect your financial information, you will need to take ownership of your online safety. Here are a few steps to help you protect your information while using People's Online via the Internet.

  1. NEVER reveal your People's Online password or account Personal Security Code (PSC) to anyone - ever! Your password & PSC are designed to protect the privacy of your banking information, but they only can work if you keep them secret. Attempts to break these passwords are monitored by special software that will only allow a few attempts before the password needs to be reset in the branch. If you think your online password or account PSC has been compromised, change it immediately!
  2. Don't leave your PC while you are in the midst of a People's Online session.
  3. When you are finished using People's Online, be sure to use the EXIT button to log off the system before visiting other web sites.
  4. If other people have access to your computer, clear your browser's cache in order to remove copies of web pages that may have been stored temporarily on your system. Refer to your browser's Help file for instructions on clearing your cache.
  5. If you send People's an email, remember not to include personal information regarding your accounts or yourself. Email sent via the Internet is potentially able to be read in transit by others. EXCEPTION: Emails sent by secure email forms provided within our People's Online Banking and Trading system, which encrypt your communication to protect the privacy of your information.
  6. For additional resources on safeguarding your online information, please review the Consumer Alerts and Security section of our site.

ADDING ACCOUNTS TO YOUR PROFILE

For your privacy and convenience, we recommend that you create a separate online profile for each account owner. This will ensure that persons who are not signers on an account will not be able to view account information.

For example: John Money Jr. has the following joint accounts at People's Bank (with different signers on each account):
Account Type Account Owners/ Signers
Personal Checking A John Money Jr. or Mary Money
Personal Checking B John Money Sr. or John Money Jr.
XYZ Business Checking Account John Money Jr. is one of the signers. His spouse and father are not.
Brokerage Account John Money Jr.


In this example, three separate online profiles should be created. Each owner/signer should have a separate username and password for his or her own individual profile. The profiles would be:

John Money Jr.'s Online Profile
Personal Checking A
Personal Checking B
XYZ Business Checking Account
Brokerage Account

Mary Money's Online Profile
Personal Checking A

YOUR BROWSER'S SECURITY

People's Online uses 128-bit SSL strong encryption during your online sessions to safeguard your data. Encryption essentially is a way of scrambling your online information before it leaves your computer, so that if intercepted it is completely unreadable. We require that your web browser support 128-bit encryption because it is approximately 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times stronger than 40-bit encryption. While 40-bit encryption might be fine for low-risk transactions, security professionals believe it might not be adequate for protecting financial transactions. When you request information via People's Online on the Internet, your request is encrypted as it travels. We then decode your request for information and send it back to you, again - safely encrypted. When you receive it, your browser decodes the information and displays it.

You can identify that your online information is encrypted in Netscape if the small key or lock at the bottom left-hand corner of your screen is unbroken. Users of Microsoft browsers will see a lock appear during an encrypted session.

PEOPLE'S OTHER SECURITY FEATURES

We closely track each time you connect to People's and monitor the session to make sure that our response is sent only to your PC.

We have in place a "firewall" and other security software and hardware to prevent access to the banking system by unauthorized users. These types of technology are designed to prevent a hacker from damaging our site or from accessing your account information.

To help you ensure that you are really attached to People's during your online sessions, we use digital identity verification. We have a People's Bank of Connecticut digital server certificate from Verisign - the premier certification authority on the Internet. Your browser uses it each time you sign on to let you verify that you are connected to People's Bank.

We have a number of other security procedures in place, which we must keep confidential in order to maintain their security. They are designed so that our Internet partnership may be a safe and secure one.