31 Jul Three Easy Things To Protect Your Money From Hacks

Sony. Experion. Target. CapitalOne.

These were recent hacks where MILLIONS of people’s data was taken. The hard thing is that there is NOTHING you can do about those unless you work at a large corporation and have security and cloud architecture experience. My guess is that 99.5% of you don’t (but if you do, congrats, because your skillsets are rare and you are making a crap top of money!)

So should you just give up? Your information is “out there” already. Why bother hiding it. Privacy is dead, right?

WRONG. What many people don’t understand is that just because your information gets downloaded, doesn’t mean its accessible. Much of that information is still encrypted and takes further measures to get access to.

But cybersecurity in your personal life is a big deal! Millennials are the most hacked generation out of everyone! Moreso than the Boomers. Nana and Pop Pop are getting hacked less than Blue Ivey and Cameron (you know, typical Millennial kids’ names).

The reality is this…we need to be more vigilant of phishing scams and potential hacks that can happen to us individually because that is when your bank account gets emptied.

So what can you do to prevent this! Here are three things you can do RIGHT NOW to protect your money.

1. Always pay on the companies web portal, NOT through email

If you get an email from someone, I don’t care if it is a kind, thoughtful Nigerian prince or the US Government needing your money immediately or you could go to jail due to late payments on your taxes. NEVER EVER CLICK THE LINK TO PAY.

Always go to the website manually (type it in your search bar) and log in to see the details. You can look at the original sender and see if its incorrectly spelled or something completely different, but they are getting so good at this, I just recommend going to the website to pay anything.

Also, if you think the Nigerian Prince Scam thing is just a joke now, then why did it still generate over $700,000 last year?

We have got to get better at this and this is a full-proof way to ignore scams that come in via email. And FYI, the US government will NOT take you to jail for being a year late on your taxes.

2. Use your credit card to pay for everything

Not only do you get points and rewards that are way better than your pathetic, almost non-existant checking account interest rate, but you get protection!

Companies like VISA, Mastercard, and Discover have built in protections to return people’s money. They usually have superior monitoring services compared to most banks. But if you did get hacked, you will get your money back within days. With a bank, it could take MONTHS.

My wife got her Paypal account hacked. She had her bank account tied to it instead of a credit card. The hacker bought $4000 worth of stuff. It took 7 months to get this money back from the bank. Later, my Paypal account got hacked for $1500 but my VISA card was on it. They froze the purchase and refunded my money in 7 days (we have since canceled our Paypal accounts).

Missing significant cash like that can break a family. Protect yourself with the purchase protections that most credit cards offer. Just read the fine print before you set one up and understand what is and isn’t included.

3. Stop making your passwords so stupid and obvious…seriously, stop!

I wish this was a joke. Seriously. You’d think we all know better by now, but apparently we don’t. Make a somewhat complicated password. I don’t care if its your pet fish with a number and a capital letter. And go the extra mile and add a ! or * or something.

These are the MOST USED PASSWORDS of 2019:

1. 123456
2. 123456789
3. qwerty
4. password
5. 111111
6. 12345678
7. abc123
8. 1234567
9. password1
10. 12345

I know. And we wonder how these hackers are getting in your email addresses and social media accounts. Doesn’t take a genius to try these. Please, I’m not asking you to do a crazy combo of Lk48v2JFY2(#&. Just do something like iLovepuppies1!. Boom, your love of puppies has now protected your digital domain and you’ve outsmarted the hackers!

We can do this people. I believe in you. Take these three steps, stay vigilant any time you get a strange text or email and protect your monaaaaaayyy!