5 Reasons You Deserve to Have Your Identity Stolen Online
I am amazed at how lazy people are when it comes to their online personal security. Here is a list of reasons why you deserve to have your identity stolen online and some tips to help you protect yourself.
1. Your password sucks.
Are you using one of the 10 most common passwords? If you are, change it now!
These are considered weak passwords:
- Short passwords; less than eight characters
- All the letters are in the same case, upper or lower
- Your user name
- Words found in the dictionary
These are considered strong passwords:
- Contains eight characters or more
- Uses a mixture of upper and lower case letters, numbers, and/or special characters.
- Is not even close to a readable word; completely random
- Is changed frequently
2. You use the same user name and password for all your online accounts.
Use a separate user name and password for each of your most sensitive accounts, such as online banking, PayPal, and eBay. Any online account that has access to your detailed personal information or finances should have its own user name and password.
If you have trouble remembering your online passwords get a secure password manager.
3. You can’t tell the difference between a phishing e-mail and an e-mail from your Grandma.
Phishing is a ploy by scammers to convince you to enter your personal information into an online form or e-mail, by mimicking the look of familiar sites.
Play close attention to e-mail messages that ask you to verify your information online. Most organizations won’t ask you to confirm your personal information in an e-mail message. If you receive an e-mail requesting your personal information, don’t click on the link in the message. Instead, either log-in to the company’s website like you normally would or give them a call. Better safe than sorry.
4. You think a secure connection is getting a phone number from the hottie at the bar.
Anytime you are making a purchase or entering personally identifiable information online, you need to make sure you are on a secure connection. Your web browser will tell you if you are on a secure connection two ways: The page address will begin with https:// and there will be a lock icon in the status bar.
Secure Internet Address:
Secure icon in the lower right-hand corner of your browser:
No Lock = No Love. Don’t enter your personal information into an online form if you don’t see BOTH of these secure page indicators.
5. You have so much money that you don’t care about that $24.95 recurring monthly charge you keep seeing on your credit card statement.
Be proactive about following-up with your bank or credit card company if you see a charge you don’t recognize. Don’t wait to inquire about a transaction because some institutions have time limits on fraud claims.
I really don’t think you deserve to have your identity stolen. On the contrary, I hope you open your eyes and see where you can improve your personal security to prevent identity theft from ruining your life.
Here are some identity theft resources for you:
You may be interested to see this, it’s a Phishing quiz.
Click here
I got 8/10, let me know how you get on.
And I am guilty for one of the above
Apologies, direct link to the tool
Cliques ici
Thanks for the link to the quiz. It was really informative.
I had higher expectations for myself, but I scored 8/10.
en, interesting post, for the first quiz I got 7 out of 10
A good way to form passwords is with the first letters of words in a phrase. An example could be “sypftsf49″ — Steve Young Played For The San Francisco 49ers.
That’s a good tip, Peter! Thanks!
I thought I had a fair idea about internet security - 5 out of 10 says otherwise.
Roboform is a good download to keep track of all your various passwords.
I used Roboform for a while, but it had some quirky feature I didn’t like. I don’t remember exactly what it was now, as it’s been a couple of years since I’ve used it.
It may be time to check it out again.
I think one of the big mistakes is number 2.
“You use the same user name and password for all your online accounts.”
I’ve seen people get hacked because one forum account gets compromised, then everything gets hacked after that.
Good post.
I don’t understand why that had to name “phishing” after the band!
Fretcam: I’ve seen it happen too many times and it’s unfortunate.
There’s really no excuse (besides laziness) IMHO, especially since you can sign-up for several GMail accounts and have them all forwarded to a single account.
Thanks for the feedback!
Car News Guy: LOL! Giving Phish a bad name, aren’t we?
This is a really informative post. Fortunately, I am not so lazy. However, be online is always risky and you never know when your identity will be stolen.
Kersson: Thanks!
You are certainly right. We have to always be on the lookout for scams and the potential for identity theft. Even then, it’s sometimes hard to discern between fraudulent and legitimate sites.
This is a good informative post. I especially liked the one about the phishing emails. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to stop my wife from opening one of those darn emails!
Thanks for sharing,
Don
Online scams to steal personal information is prevalent but I think sometimes people think that dealing in person is always safe.
When you consider the fact that in most European countries credit card receipts contain full credit card numbers with expiration dates on them real life scamming can’t be ignored.
Thanks very much, I did find this post informative. While I’m not so lazy as most, I hope, I do tend to take online security for granted a lot of the time… but this post has certainly snapped me out of whatever lull I was in.
Thanks for this good info — which was entertainingly put.
I do worry about this issue from time to time. I figure I can do a coupla things to lessen my chances of being hit: Change my passwords regularly, and make them complex.
I suspect this will help quite a bit. (But if not, at least it stops me worrying!)
It is so hard to have single passwords for every account ..that is why people are hacked so frequently
Anyways you wrote a very informative article. Congratulations.
is not that hard to keep multiple passwords if you put some time and efforts in organizing your pass in a file. I do it that way
Good thing my password is not on the list or i never tried any of those password. I always use password that have 8-10 characters.
That list is just funny..but useless…how people did come out with those words?
as i know, some people like to share the id and password with other and some people is lazy to they are using the same password as their id…for me, i will change me password once a week for security purpose and the way i form my password is axactly what peter mention earlier on.
for people who like to share their ID and password then they should know they will face this in the future. and i agree with what Miss Lingerie mention, some people is lazy then they should deserve that their id been stolen.
good points, some common sense should be applied
I don’t completely agree with you. Not all accounts are that important. To be honest my Y!Messenger password is the name of my dog.. so you can guess how simple it is. I’m not afraid someone is going to hack in, because nobody would want to harm me. Perhaps those with lots of enemies should worry!
Nice article. I think its well worth it to have tricky passwords, especially on any site that has access to your financial or personal information. If you can’t remember the passwords, write them down!
I wonder how can i remember all user IDs and passwords in case i use different log ins for each account. won’t it be too much difficult? But your post ws worth informative and i agree with the idea of using financial accounts i.e. paypal with great CARE.
Great article. I get Ebay & Paypal phishing emails all the time and just hit delete.
good reasons, thanks