For several years, I banked with Commerce Bank. Last year, like many banks, Commerce had financial trouble and was acquired by TD Bank. From my perspective, the acquisition went smoothly. So smoothly, in fact, that I didn’t know about the changeover until I paid a visit to my local branch, where I found a completely different bank in its place. Nothing makes the heart skip like not finding your bank no longer exists.
Since the changeover, I’ve been happily visiting TD Bank online using the same bookmark I’ve had for the past several years. The bookmark originally pointed to commerceonline.com, and that’s how I’ve done my online banking since the day I first saved it. When TD Bank took over Commerce, the link continued to work.
Not what I expected to see when I clicked my online banking bookmark.
When I visited today, I got a big surprise: at first glance, I thought my bank’s website had been taken over by a domain squatter. Actually, in a sense, it turns out it had been taken over by a domain squatter. It was filled with ‘sponsored search results.’ After I recovered from shock, I realized that what had probably happened was that TD Bank, the new owner of Commerce Bank, had probably forgotten to renew the registration on the old domain, and so it fell into the hands of whomever has it now. The net effect is that when I use the my bookmark that has always taken me to my online banking login, I now land on a page not apparently controlled by Commerce or TD Bank, but one owned by some unknown entity.
This poses potential security problems. Let’s assume there are lots of people like me, people who long ago bookmarked the site and trust it to take them to their bank. Now, what if the new custodians of the domain decide to take advantage of this fact and masquerade as the bank? I’d be willing to bet a lot of people might accidentally give up their login and pin number before they realized what had happened. We’re all creatures of habit. How often do you really click the little security icon in your browser to verify a site’s identity?
This brings me to my point: guard your old domains. If you ever used them for anything important, it’s better to keep paying the $9/year to renew the domain than to let it fall into the hands of someone who might use them to take advantage of others.
And if you happened to once bank with Commerce Bank USA, I strongly suggest updating your bookmarks.
