Sending your data
When making an online loan request, you have to fill in a form. This form includes basic questions (name, contat information), but more confidential information as well: income, employeer’s name, birthdate, … When you submit this form, your data is being sent to the loan agency in charge of the website.
The risk
There is a risk of data in-transit interception by cyber criminals, whether by using a security breach or by hacking the website. Thus, your confidential information could get into wrong hands. If this happens, your data can be used for:
- Identity theft: for example to create a false social account.
- Account hacking: e-mail account, social network account, or any only account. Indeed the more information the hacker has about you, the more easy it is to crack your password and gain access to personal accounts.
The risk is fortunately low, but still exists, and the damage can be severe. In order to adress thos security issues, more and more websites use a security certificate.
Check the presence of a security certificate
When you make an online loan request (or if you enter any information in any online form), there is an easy way to theck if the website is secured. If the web address begins with https://, then the website is protected with an SSL certificate. An SSL certificate ensures that any communication between the website and the site owner (the loan agency) won’t be intercepted by third parties.
Some example of website offering secured loan request
Today, there are many loan agencies offering the possibility to make a secured online loan request. For example:
- Multicredit gives the possibility to ask a loan online for both individuals and businesses.
- CreditLoan, a website specialized for expat living in Switzerland, gives the possibility to ask for an online loan. The request is free and non binding, and the data transfer is 100% secured.
Another problem: the use of the data
The data security is not the only problem. How can you be sure that your data will be used to nothing more than to process the request? Can your data be used for anything else, or be given to third parties? In order to check this, you should verify the disclaimer of the loan agency:
- Check the terms of use: especially anything related to data privacy.
- If there is no disclaimer or terms of use visible on the website, then you should be very cautious vefore submitting the form!
All in all, the first thing that should come into your mind before submitting an online form is asking yourself: who will receive my data? Is that a real company (with a real postal address)? Is this company trustworthy?
