My husband & I are going to Munich, Vienna, & Berlin in Apr/May. Including other travel, our entire trip will be 6 weeks long. During that time we will need to pay two bills that come due while we are gone & cannot be paid in advance (a credit over 30 days would refund).

If we pay from our checking account in an internet cafe, or internet service store-front, or using a hotel computer, is it safe to do so? Can someone bring up our account info on whatever computer we use?

We thought of 3 options:
1. put a check in a stamped & addressed envelope, & let a relative mail it; with the 30+ days lag time, they could forget & mail it late.

2. when due, we could call our insurance company for our house insurance, & pay via VISA over our cell phone; haven't called yet to determine if this will work for our monthly house payment.

3. pay from our checking account via a computer in an internet cafe, internet store, provided by the hotel, etc.; we are not taking a computer with us.

What do you think? What would you do? Are the public computers safe?

Thanks, Julie

Isn't your house payment the same each month? Why not automatically schedule it to be paid through your bank account?

Same with your insurance... you can schedule that to be paid from your bank account on a certain day.

Technically any public computer could be loaded with trapping software that records all your keystrokes.

Although any decent internet cafe whould have software that detects and reports/removes such invasions. And electronic theft of individual account information is MUCH less common than the old-fashioned method of fishing your cc carbons out of the trash.

Why not leave it all with the relative and then use the Internet Cafe to send the relative a reminder email?

Thank you for your responses.

joannyc, for decades we have had our continuting monthly bills on auto direct debit. But we just moved into our house in May 2009 & our mortgage company has changed 3 times. So, we are postponing DD on the mortgage payment until things settle & they stop bundling, buying, & selling our mortgage like candy! We pay our own real estate taxes & house insurance, but we prefer not to have those DD.

capxxx, I think I'll skip paying via a public pc - why take the unnecessary risk. As you suggested, I can just remind the relative by phone or email.

Thanks again, Julie

Julie I think that's a good idea. You can never be to careful. I've had my credit card duplicated at a restaurant in Munich. It was the only time I used that card during our two week trip and false charges started in Munich and moved to other countries even though the card was in my possession.

Dax,

which restaurant?

Hello Julie

Good idea to skip the public pc! There are just too many hackers around these days.

The longest trip we've ever taken was 3 months. Nowadays we average around 4 weeks at a time. Still, getting the bills paid is hard to manage at times.

I'm not too much of a fan of automatic payments, although our health insurance is now done that way. About 15 years ago, we used MCI for our home phone provider. When we returned, our cc statement had a bill for over $2,000 for calls to one of these "900" numbers (offering "pleasure" 24 hrs/day type deal).

It took about 3 months of back and forth conversations before they finally believed us that no one had been home and thus removed it from our bill.

Have a great trip!

Find somebody who won't "forget" to mail it and let them do it...that way you don't have to go through any of the rigamarole you've described for number 2 and 3

Putting your private banking info through a public computer is inviting trouble.

If you use public computers in Germany for email and such, keep in mind that their keyboards are qwertz, not qwerty. You may have trouble signing in if you use an alpha password. Use a numerical PW.

Clear the browsing history and cookies before you sign off.

Can you not use your online banking from your computer at home to schedule from your checking account in advance a specific payment for a specific payment day? For example when I get my credit card bill I go to my online banking that same day and schedule the payment for the amount I want for the day I want (such as the day before it is actually due). Depending on the type of payment it is the bank sends it on the right day to get there on the date you select (1 day, 2 days, 5 days in advance or whatever).