We are living in a virtual world, and you are a virtual girl…or boy. While today’s world citizens enjoy unprecedented conveniences thanks to the World Wide Web, we also experience unparalleled risks in terms of identity theft and vulnerability of key information. So, how can you keep your Internet identity secure? The experts have some important answers.
Create a Virtual Fort Knox
While no solution is failsafe when it comes to protecting your identity and your financial world on the Internet, there are some things you can do to make it dang hard for would-be thieves to get their grubby virtual paws on your data.
- Toughen Up Those Passwords – If you’re one of the guilty many who use the same password for everything, it is bad move No. 1 in the world of virtual identity protection. Use different passwords for each website and make them complicated. Randomly using uppercase letters within your passwords, intentionally misspelling words, or just plain creating a nonsense mishmash of letters and numbers are great strategies for keeping hackers at bay.
- Put Some Armor on Your Security Questions, too – Password-toughening tips can also be applied to your security question answers. Use bad grammar that would make your high school English teacher blush! Throw in random numbers where letters should be; misspell things to your heart’s content; or, once again, just put plain nonsense in there rather than an answer that makes logical sense with the question.
- Use Secure Sites – Use https sites when you get online, especially if you’re connecting to the Internet through public Wi-Fi. Most of the Internet biggies (Yahoo, Google, Facebook) have secure connections that will encrypt your data while you’re using them.
- Use Two-Step Authentication- If websites you frequently login into offer the option of a two-step sign-in, do it. Is it inconvenient? You betcha. But two login points make it twice as hard for hackers to break into your account.
- Get Notified – Another option you should utilize whenever it’s available is receiving login notifications to alert you to suspicious activity, like an unfamiliar IP address gaining access to one of your accounts. A quick text message from Facebook, Gmail, etc., can help you nip a hack in the bud before it blossoms into a full-grown breach.
There is not currently a cure-all for identity theft, but taking measures like these can certainly throw a monkey wrench into a cyber thief’s evil plot.
Stay virtually safe out there!