Today’s Scam of the day involves yet another major data breach.  This is the third major data breach I have warned you about in the last four days.  This time the victim was Fidelity Investments where 77,099 of its customers had personal information including Social Security numbers and driver’s licenses compromised which can readily lead to identity theft.  The data breach occurred between August 17 and 19th, but was not disclosed by Fidelity until October 9th.  Fidelity has sent an email to the affected customers in which they offer free credit monitoring for two years..

So what can you do to protect yourself from these data breaches that will be occurring?

TIPS

One important lesson is to limit the amount of personal information that you provide to companies and websites whenever possible.  For example, your doctor doesn’t need your Social Security number for his or her records.

You should make sure that you have a unique password for each of your online accounts so that if one of your passwords is compromised in a data breach, all of your accounts will not be in danger.  If your information is compromised in a data breach, you should immediately change the password for that account.

If you have not already done so, set up dual factor authentication for each of you accounts where it is available. This will protect you from having those accounts stolen by someone who may have access to your password.  However it should be noted that the malware responsible for this particular data breach is able to bypass password requirements and dual factor authentication.

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