Home > Work > Swiped: How to Protect Yourself in a World Full of Scammers, Phishers, and Identity Thieves
1 " With your Social Security number in the wind, whoever finds it—or, more likely, whoever buys it on one of the many black-market information exchanges on the deep web—holds the keys to every part of your life. What that means—plain and simple—is that you’re going to need an efficient way to keep one eye over your shoulder, all the time. "
― Adam Levin , Swiped: How to Protect Yourself in a World Full of Scammers, Phishers, and Identity Thieves
2 " We expose our most sensitive personal information any time wePick up a phone, respond to a text, click on a link, or carelessly provide personal information to someone we don’t know;Fail to properly secure computers or devices;Create easy-to-crack passwords;Discard, rather than shred, documents that contain PII;Respond to an email that directs us to call a number we can’t independently confirm, or complete an attachment that asks for our PII in an insecure environment;Save our user ID or password on a website or in an app as a shortcut for future logins;Use the same user ID or password throughout our financial, social networking, and email universes; Take [online] quizzes that subtly ask for information we’ve provided as the answers to security questions on various websites.Snap pictures with our smartphone or digital camera without disabling the geotagging function;Use our email address as a user name/ID, if we have the option to change it; Use PINS like 1234 or a birthday;Go twenty-four hours without reviewing our bank and credit card accounts to make absolutely sure that every transaction we see is familiar;Fail to enroll in free transactional monitoring programs offered by banks, credit unions, and credit card providers that notify us every time there is any activity in our accounts;Use a free Wi-Fi network [i.e. cafés or even airports] without confirming it is correctly identified and secure, to check email or access financial services websites that contain our sensitive data. "