Looking to protect yourself from fraud, identity theft, and scams? Maybe you’re wondering about the best way to maximize your security online.
Bedrock Technology has information for you during National Consumer Protection Week — March 4-10, 2018 — and any time of the year.
We originally wrote a blog post when the Equifax cyberattack first came to light back in September, outlining several cybersecurity measures you can take right now to keep your online identify safe.
What You Can Do to Protect Yourself
If you haven't done so in over a year (or ever), you can view your credit report at annualcreditreport.com. You are entitled to one free credit report from all three credit reporting companies every 12 months.
Experian provides a free dark web email scan. Thieves will resort to the dark web to retrieve personally identifying information, such as social security numbers or passwords.
Pay attention to URLs and hyperlinks sent via email or posted on social media. Equifax's Twitter account accidentally tweeted out a phishing website. You can learn more about the signs of email scams and phishing attacks on our blog here.
Continue to regularly review your bank and credit card statements. Sign up for fraud alerts with your credit card company.
Your passwords could be stronger. Make them longer, more complex, and never reuse them across multiple sites. If you haven’t changed your passwords in some time, it’s not a bad idea to start now, especially with websites that contain sensitive information such as financial or credit card data. Use a different password for each site. Password managers such as LastPass help create unique passwords for each website and saves the password for each website in a “vault,” which can be accessed by using one master password.
Enable two-factor authentication when offered. Gmail, PayPal, and Amazon are a few examples of websites that provide this additional cybersecurity feature.
Finally, as a bonus, download the extension HTTPS Everywhere for FireFox, Chrome, or Opera browsers. This extension encrypts communications with many websites, which makes your browsing more secure.