In the increasingly vulnerable world where identity theft sees more than 10 million cases in the United States alone each and every year, the internet as the leading cause, we must all increase our awareness when it comes to our personal data and information accordingly.  The cases of identity theft each year increase but our awareness doesn’t.  This leaves the door open to an increasing number of online crooks and hackers to exploit our vulnerabilities and take our money and or completely destroy our financial stability by such actions as taking out loans in our names.  Taking out loans in other people’s names is only one form of identity theft, there are many others.  From having your Facebook account hacked, to transferring money from your online bank account to overseas are all increasingly common actions of a cyber criminal.

There are a few ways to protect your personal data and sensitive information and the majority of these revolve around creating passwords that are un-hackable.  There are a few methods that can help you do this and the first basic one being that you have a different password or pin for each different facility that requires one. Too many people have one password or one pin number for every transactional account in which they do need a password or pin.  The problem with this is the fact that if someone finds out that pin or password all of your accounts are exposed and liable to be hacked without a great deal of effort.  The key is you create different passwords and pins for each of your accounts.  There is the obvious issue of remembering each one but unfortunately you don’t have many options to not do this.  And do not; under any circumstance write your pins or passwords down.

Many people leave their bank account pin numbers in their wallets and it couldn’t be a more stupid thing to do.  Criminals will check the entirety of the purse before attempting to take money out for exactly this reason.  You might as well simply hand the criminal the cash.  If you must write down your pins and passwords, write them down and place them in a safe at a bank.  This way, in the case of your death, you family members could access those accounts on your behalf.  But regardless, let this be the only place where you have written records of your passwords and or pins.

With the creation of your pins and passwords, do not under any circumstances relate digits or words as part of your passwords that are names of pets, kids, or other related life names and numbers like birth dates.  Keep the passwords and pins completely irrelevant and nonsensical.  Try and incorporate both capital letters, lower case numbers and letters as part of your passwords or pins.  This so that it’s impossible for people to guess your passwords, you’d be surprised how easy it is to guess peoples passwords and pins.  Most people unfortunately use their kid’s or their pet names as pins.   Most criminals know this!  And, remember to be aware of your surroundings and the people you deal with for your own  identity protection.

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