Financial Apps on your phone

It seems a no brainer to include Apps on your phone for banking and credit cards.  I recently received this email from American Express:

Enjoy added peace of mind with protection alerts on the Amex Mobile app. Simply enable push notifications to set up this service. With protection alerts, you can:
Get updates when irregular or fraudulent activity is detected on your account.
Verify fraudulent charges in seconds.
Amex Mobile is available on the App StoreSM or Google Play™

Sounds good, but there is an unintended consequence:  you have to enter your userid and password.  What is wrong with that, you say?  Well, unless you have a secure password manager, you will need to remember the password.  Who has a memory for dozens of 20 character, letter- mixed and lower case, number, and symbol passwords.  According to security best-practices, each one of them must be unique.  Can you do that?  The alternative is to have one or two passwords that you use everywhere.  More than that, those passwords are usually simple:  definitely easy for cybercriminals to break.

So, consider that before you download these apps.  And please follow best practices.  Hacking financial institutions is becoming a weapon of choice for countries and terrorist groups as well as "enterprising" college students:  cheap, easy, with high payoff.

PS:  The alternative is to use a password manager that works across all platforms:  Computers, tablets, smart phones.   Then you will have to remember just one gosh awful password.  For a review of password managers, see:  http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2407168,00.asp

BTW, giving a license to one of these would make a great Christmas gift.  Of course, the gift recipient would have to learn how to use it.  At least for Lastpass, the on-line videos are good.  And if you or they are in the neighborhood, you can always give me a call.