We have talked and I have lectured before about the need to verify who links to you. This is on my audit schedule and guess what. We are the official financing provider for a furniture dealer. Perhaps a local branch manager set this up, we don't know yet. But neither the senior lender, nor the lending department that handles these applications was aware of this.

Are they reputable, was there consent to use our name and address, should these applications be sent in with the purpose "home improvement" as their site says??? Good questions.

FYI; Search the Web and newsgroups for references to your bank and product names. Check for links to your sites. Practice safe computing and look for those co-branding with you.

Add the need for the "holder-in-due-course" disclosure in direct notes to buy that merchant's products if you now discover you have a business relationship.

Andy, how do you check for links to a website?

Thanks in advance . . .

I use Google, but I think it works with others (AOL, HotBot, MSN, AltaVista, Excite, Go, Northern Light, and FAST for example).

To determine link popularity, visit any of the above-named search engines and enter “link:sitename” (without quotes) in the search field. "Sitename" would be changed for each of your Uniform Resource Locators (URL). For example, to find out how many Web pages link to the First National Bank Texas site at www.1stnb.com, enter:

link:http://www.1stnb.com

in the Search For field and then click Search. The results will then be displayed.

You also need to check for other types of references that may be unacceptable to your bank. I always include a general search on the bank's main phone numbers.

What are the risks associated with someone linking to your bank? The reason I am asking is because we want to know if we need to monitor other organizations linking to our Bank. What risk would this mitigate?

Reputational risk is the big one.

Also consider webspoofing. A smart spoofer would include a 'home' button on their bogus login page that takes the user back to the actual bank homepage just to add the appearance of authenticity to a site.

This site has some excellent information on how to determine who is linking to your site, as well as determining how your site performs on search engines...
http://www.submitcorner.com/Guide/Assessment/
Hope you find it helpful!

I don't know why it didn't work when you used it a second time. But it still works for me.

Thats is wierd, I tried again and it still does not work. Thanks anyway.

What do you do if you find sites that you do not want to have links to your site? Contact their webmaster and ask for removal? I found 11 sites, mostly cash advance and payday loan sites, that I do not want to be associated with.

That is the first step. Ask. Then have counsel ask. I'd go to "webmaster@..." and the business if you have contact info. The webmaster may not be the content provider.

You'll have to decide the cost effectiveness of using more than that. Most legit businesses will remove the link.

Using WHOIS, I found out the registered owners of the sites. I sent each of them a letter last Friday. So far, 4 of the 11 sites have responded and removed the links.