Just read an article “The online consumer needs to be careful” in Financial Adviser magazine and it got us thinking about unregulated sites in the financial industry.
Nobody likes phishing sites. From the relatively benign multiplayer game account to your bank details and sort code, there is a nefarious site waiting to catch someone out.
These sites borrow designs, logos and terminology from genuine businesses which in itself would be bad enough, but at the same time are free to use words that are frowned upon in the industry - words that could lure an unsuspecting consumer in, and with more of them opening than ever before - how much longer can the online financial industry cope before consumer confidence falls away.
Increasing regulation is not the answer, it’s expensive and more often than not inconveniences the legitimate company already struggling in a competitive market.
So how can we get around this?
Why not build an industry-wide system so that any legitimate financial business could use to prove that the website the consumer is on is that of an authorised financial business?
[caption id="attachment_12329" align="alignnone" width="940"]
Spud shield concept[/caption]
Here at Codepotato, we’ve been discussing such a system - one that would perform a series a checks, such as the web address, confirming it is the address the genuine company uses for it’s online presence. A positive result to the check would display a badge or emblem to denote a legitimate site or a warning if it wasn’t.
We believe such a system would take only a few days to build and, best of all, would be completely free.
Spudshield - consumers protected.
We’d love to know what you think about this idea, what you’d like to see it do and what a difference it would make to your business!
Feel free to comment below or use the hashtag #spudshield on twitter.
Even if you don’t have suggestions, but are interested in seeing this built, please like or leave a “yes!” in the comments.