Safety you can bank on: Chromebook, Linux, phone

Q: I'm nervous about keeping my online banking safe on my regular PC. Should I buy a Chromebook and use it just for that?

A: Cheap laptops running Google's Chrome OS have a lot going for them as long as you don't need conventional, disk-based apps and rarely lack for bandwidth. These $200-and-up models ignore Windows and Mac viruses and update and back themselves up automatically.

And the guest mode in Chrome OS — in which a visiting user doesn't have to sign in with your Google account and gets no access to your information — makes a Chromebook handy to have around when friends stop by.

But depending on your tolerance for tinkering, these Web-centric laptops may be overkill for safeguarding financial transactions.

If you're not deterred by learning strange software, you can save hundreds of dollars by downloading a copy of the open-source Linux operating system and burning it to a CD or copying it to a flash drive. As security journalist Brian Krebs explained in the summer of 2012, you can pop that into your Windows PC, boot the machine off it, and go online insulated from whatever might lurk in your copy of Windows.

(In that post, Krebs endorsed a version of Linux with the charming name Puppy Linux; I usually recommend a different variety called Ubuntu, but the differences don't amount to much in this context.)

Using Linux just for online banking also insulates you from most of its potential complexity: You're only running a browser.

But if installing new apps in Windows already fills you with dread, or the thought of picking one version of Linux out of dozens makes your head hurt, spend money instead of time. A Chromebook just might work — and might be all the computer you needed in the first place.

For simpler banking chores, and especially if your bank allows you to deposit checks by scanning them with an app, a phone or tablet should suffice.

Or look to your regular machine: You shouldn't have to accept malware infestations on a "real" computer as inevitable.

If you run an older version of Windows, upgrading to Windows 8 (or buying a new PC with that preinstalled) will help. Win 8 improves considerably over Win 7's security and shuts down XP in this regard.

Or you could get a Mac — but remember that Apple's operating system isn't as malware-free as it once was.

Both OS X and Windows become safer with a few changes. Rich Mogull, a longtime Mac security expert and CEO of Securosis, and Sophos security adviser Chester Wisniewski separately shared the same advice: Keep Oracle's Java software offline and don't install a separate copy of Adobe's Flash player.

(Google's Chrome and Microsoft's Internet Explorer have Flash built in and update it with far less annoyance than Adobe's downloadable version.)

They also advised Apple users to use Chrome instead of Safari. One lingering issue for Apple's browser even after recent improvements: Security fixes don't come as quickly as they should.

At the same time, remember that security software doesn't run in your own head. If a site tricks you into entering a bank username and password, your account, you're out of luck.

You're not necessarily out of much money: Federal Reserve regulations limit consumer liability from unauthorized electronic funds transfers to $50 if you notify the bank quickly enough. But who needs that stress?

That's why I wish more than ever that additional banks would get with the program and offer two-step verification like what major Webmail services and social networks provide. That extra defense ensures an attacker can't get into your account with just a username and password. They'll also need your phone to receive a one-time code either sent via text message or calculated on the spot by an app like Google Authenticator.

TIP: OS X GUEST MODE CAN BE REFUGE AGAINST MALWARE

The last two versions of OS X added an interesting wrinkle to Apple's guest-login option: If you also enable Apple's FileVault disk encryption (a good idea on any portable Mac), guest users get completely walled off from the rest of the Mac. They can't run any app but Safari, can't save any files and can't look at any other data on the computer.

Instead, guest users are confined to a hidden, read-only recovery partition of the drive. If you suspect that your Mac has some lurking virus and had previously switched on FileVault, logging in as a guest should guarantee that you're on a clean system, if not a tremendously useful one.

Rob Pegoraro is a tech writer based out of Washington, D.C. To submit a tech question, e-mail Rob atrob@robpegoraro.com. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/robpegoraro.