Considerable care and caution is required when using the internet. The following precautions are issued to guard against the risks involved:

• Protect your computer by installing an antivirus and a personal firewall, as a minimum requirement. The antivirus should preferably be set to update automatically.
  
  The firewall monitors incoming and outgoing data to minimise the risk of piracy.
• Regularly update your operating system and security software. Regular updates are issued to fix security loopholes as they become apparent.
  
  Back up your data often to avoid loss. Never save sensitive data such as passwords or PIN codes on the computer itself. You are also strongly advised to copy important data onto external media and keep them in a safe place.
• Be very careful when saving passwords. Passwords are strictly confidential. You are strongly advised to set passwords at least eight characters long, and made up of figures and letters (in a mix of upper and lower case).
  
  Don’t use words based on names and birthdays. Use different passwords for different online applications, and change them regularly.
• You are strongly advised not to access e-banking applications from public locations such as cybercafés and public libraries.
  
  Be especially careful when using Wifi connections. Always use a secure protocol such as WPA2 or WPA. WEP is no longer considered reliable.
• Never use a program if you don’t know where it comes from. Don’t open emails from unknown senders or attachments you were not expecting.
  
  Never access the Crédit Agricole eBanking site from a link in an email. Enter the address www.ca-suisse.com manually then click the eBanking eS2i tab. Or enter https://login.pbgate.net/ directly.
  
  Make sure the security padlock icon is showing, and check the digital certificate details. Instead of just closing the tab, always close the eBanking session properly: click the Log off button then shut down the internet browser.
• Never reply to an email that asks you for your personal details.
  Crédit Agricole Suisse will never email its customers asking for personal or confidential information.
  
  Before entering any personal data on a website, always check that you’re at the right address. The address of Crédit Agricole Suisse is: https://login2.pbgate.net.

Never disclose confidential or personal data in response to an email: eS2i will never ask a customer to supply personal data by email, and will never send emails containing a program for installation on the customer’s PC

• Email with a message announcing a false danger, designed to incite users to spread the rumour and thereby clutter up mailboxes and clog up a network.
• Parasitical program that enters a computer to steal data such as passwords without the user realising. Unlike a virus or a worm, a Trojan horse does not self-propagate, though some Trojan horses can destroy data too.
• Sophisticated variant of phishing (see below), whereby a user’s computer is compromised by a Trojan horse, virus or worm that diverts access from the genuine website to a pirate site. So even if users enter the right URL for the bank site, they will end up on the fake site. The diversion operates between the address entered on the browser and the actual IP address accessed. Once on the pirate site, users are asked to disclose confidential information, such as passwords or credit card numbers, and their accounts are robbed using this data.
• Tactic for stealing confidential information. Victims are sent an email purportedly from the bank, stating any manner of false pretext and inviting them to click on a link leading to a fake site, which is often very similar to the genuine site. Once on the bogus site, the victim is asked to enter access codes, account numbers, etc.
• Use of confidence tricks that exploit users’ trust or ignorance to trick them into actions contrary to their interests or the bank’s. Typical confidence tricks involve getting users to disclose passwords or confidential data.
• Computer program designed to cause nuisance and attract attention. Typical ways of doing this include preventing you from saving data, destroying data, and freezing up the computer. A virus will spread from program to program.
• Self-propagating virus that typically spreads by email or over a network, consuming system resources such as RAM and network capabilities.