Trusteer Rapport is a free security tool that’s often promoted by banks for online banking.

It’s advertised as an additional layer of security over and above anti-virus software. It is designed to protect confidential data, such as account credentials, from being stolen by malicious software (malware) or by phishing.

The software includes anti-phishing measures to protect against misdirection and attempts to prevent malicious screen scraping; it attempts to protect users against the attacks know as:- man-in-the-browser, man-in-the-middle, session hijacking and screen capturing.

Trusteer Rapport is installed as a browser extension.

This all sounds very good, but there are reviews on the Internet suggesting that Trusteer can cause computers to run very slowly, cause conflicts with your already installed anti-virus software and cause browser crashes.

Various financial institutions have been distributing the software to their customers via internet banking services.

This has included:- Bank of America, Société Générale,Tangerine, INGDirect, HSBC,The Royal Bank of Scotland, CIBC, Ulster Bank, First Direct, Santander, Standard Bank of South Africa, Nedbank, Scotiabank and more.

It is usually good advice to follow your banks recommendations, but do be careful if you install Trusteer and report any problems immediately to your bank. .