More than half of Canadians use online banking and most love the convenience of managing their cash from anywhere but many don’t realize that thieves are lurking on the Internet looking for opportunities to steal your information and your money.

CTV Calgary Consumer Specialist Lea Williams-Doherty talked to one woman who is Internet savvy and still got taken in by a scam.

Jennifer Ball's husband received an e-transfer from her saying he had $1500 waiting and all he had to do was answer her security question.

The problem was, his wife didn’t send it and by the time RBC froze her account, the thieves had answered the question on the first email, added themselves as addressees and made off with the $1500.

Computer expert Daniel Ginter says sophisticated criminals are now downloading viruses directly onto your device to harvest your banking information when you enter it.

“The most common way people are getting these viruses are usually through faulty links on trusted programs or just accidental websites that aren’t secure enough and aren’t protecting their users against these viruses, they’re downloading them down into their machines. “ said Ginter from Tech Squad.

Ginter says users can install a program that they trust from a non-trusted link, like an unofficial website, and then they may face the risk of installing additional software in addition to the software they were looking for.

“Once you give something rights on your computer, you have no idea what it’s going to do and it’s not even going to ask you for permission the second time, so that’s where the risk comes in with these viruses,” he said.

He says official websites put a lot of money into security and will protect users who use their software but users run into problems when they search with a browser for something and then click on the top results in the list.

“Before you get a virus on your computer, you’ll get small things called tracking cookies or adware and they’re essentially trying to get on your machine, gather information to sell you things. Now what these do is when you search something on any of your search engines, you’re going to find your normal results, but you’ll find three or four results they put at the top of the page to try to get you to click on their advertised pages,” he said. “They’ll install the software you’re looking for but they’re going to install four or five other packages as well that are going to run on your machine and just take care of what they want to take care of.”

He says users should avoid those types of links altogether and that another way your device can become infected is by unknowingly leaving security holes that criminals can get into remotely.

“It would be as if, you have a front door a back door and a patio door and five windows in your home. You have a security guy come in who does this as a hobby and you have a guy come in who does this as a professional. The professional’s going to come and say, yep, you’ve got five windows, three doors, we need this, this and this, we’ll secure everything. You get the hobbyist comes in, he might do a very good job securing the obvious points, he might get you a deadbolt on your front door, a deadbolt on your back door and your patio door, you’re all secure. He might forget the attic window. Now someone with the knowhow to get into your attic window is going to be able to do that. So if your website has an attic window open then you’re susceptible to these problems,” said Ginter.

Experts say the best way to protect yourself is to make sure your anti-virus software and operating system is up-to-date and you have an active firewall.  Ginther says they will catch 99.9 percent of the adware and small pieces of software that get on your machine before they even install.

Users should also avoid doing online banking at free WIFI hotspots and should turn off the roaming feature if working on confidential files.

(With files from Lea Williams-Doherty)