All banks are not created equal when it comes to protecting you from identity theft, says Javelin Strategy & Research’s annual Banking Identity Safety Scorecard. The study looked at 24 top U.S. financial institutions, testing their ability to prevent, detect and resolve identity theft. The study probed each bank’s customer-facing capabilities and features, online as well as offline. Mystery callers, for example, phoned banks to learn more about how customer service issues are handled.

Of the 24 companies, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Washington Mutual scored highest in these tests. Bank of America’s high scores were boosted by the introduction of SiteKey, image and text checks that let people know they are on an authentic Bank of America Web site and also verify customers’ identities.

Joris Evers, a journalist for CNET News, details the report’s findings, pointing out that most banks do especially well in resolving identity fraud, such as dealing with disputed transactions on accounts. According to James Van Dyke, president of Javelin Strategy & Research, financial institutions focus much more on resolving problems after they occur rather than preventing them. The research company offers numerous suggestions for improving prevention methods, including allowing customers to set up e-mail or cell phone text message alerts.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 at 10:05 pm and is filed under CNet, Credit Card Fraud, ID Theft Prevention, JP Morgan Chase, bank of america, identity verification, sitekey, washington mutual. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.