Novice Investing - Broker Is Broken

Date: Thursday 20th 2008f November 2008 04:38:52 PM

Broker Is Broken - 12/2/2005

By: Novice Investing Staff

In a news that is widely available a few days ago, Scottrade has notified customers that their personal information might have been compromised due to security breach at its e-payment services. Scottrade is a US online brokerage firm specializing in stocks transactions with over 1.3 million customers.

This brings us to a new reality. As transactions move online, our personal information is dependant upon the safety of our server. Scottrade is just one of many victims of hackers over the past few years. For this matter, Scottrade has required affected customers to change their account number and other security features.

For those of you looking for online broker, online security needs to be considered as well. Most of broker comparison websites give you details of pricing, account requirement but lack the security details. We are not sure how to rate a website's security feature, but perhaps someone will figure this thing out.

Other than its security feature, Scottrade boasts one of the best stock trade and customer services. The cost of each stock trade is a flat $ 7 trade. Whether you are doing a limit or a market order, the commission rate is still $ 7 per trade. Meanwhile, the company builds offices everywhere around the United States to cater the need of customers requiring face-to-face services. Furthermore, account requirement for opening a brokerage account is as little as $ 500, making it accessible to novice investors. It is too bad that the security breach might have change customer's perception regarding Scottrade as a safe online brokers.




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Disclaimer: The sole purpose of this article is educational. This article is merely the opinion of the writer and is not in any way a buy/sell recommendation regarding any securities.

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