Identity theft is a serious crime that can result in financial harm and tremendous disruption of the lives of its victims.  We are presently in an era of constant major data breaches so no matter how careful you are about protecting your personal information, you are only as safe as the security at the companies and government agencies that have your personal information.  While often people are less concerned when data breaches do not result in the theft of their Social Security number or credit card number, a data breach in which merely your email address and password were compromised can result in major problems.  If, as many people you use your email address as your user name for all of your accounts and you also use the same password for all of your accounts, you are in serious jeopardy if a data breach occurs which results in that information becoming known to criminals.  Criminals use “checking” software which will search the Internet to find companies, banks and other institutions where you have used your email address as your username.  Once they find these companies, they will try to log in using the password that was obtained through a data breach.  If that other account is an account such as your bank account, you are in serious trouble.  It is for this reason that it is important to use unique passwords for each of your online accounts.

TIPS

You should have a unique, strong password for each of your online accounts so that in the event that there is a data breach and the password for one of your accounts becomes compromised, all of your accounts will not become vulnerable to being hacked.  Creating and remembering strong, unique passwords for each of your accounts is not as difficult as it may appear.  You can start with a strong base password constructed from a phrase, such as IDon’tLikePasswords. Add a few symbols like !!! and then adapt it for each account you have so that you will have a secure and easy to remember password for each of your online accounts.   Thus, your Amazon password could be IDon’tLikePasswords!!!AMA.

Whenever possible use dual factor authentication for your accounts so that when you attempt to log in, a one-time code will be sent to your cell phone to insert in order to get access to your account.  For convenience sake you can set up dual factor authentication so that it is only required if you are logging in from a different computer or device than you normally use.

An easy solution to the problem of the answers to knowledge based authentication security questions being too readily available on the Internet is to make the answer to your security question nonsensical. For instance, if your security question is what is your mother’s maiden name, you can pick something ridiculous, such as “firetruck” as the answer. No hacker will ever be able to find the answer to this security question online and it is so silly that you will remember it.

Also, with your email address commonly known by many scammers, you can expect to receive more  phishing and even more dangerous, specifically targeted spear phishing emails that attempt to lure you into clicking on links containing malware or try to convince you to provide personal information that can be used to make you a victim of identity theft.  Never click on links or provide personal information in response to an email or text message unless you are absolutely sure that the email or text message is legitimate.

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