Thieves can discover your personal and financial information very easily online. If you use mobile banking, access Wi-Fi in public places, or shop online, you are at risk of the famous identity theft. What can you do? Get credit monitoring. Use a reputable credit monitoring service to review your important credit report on a regular basis to find out any changes quickly and easily. You will be able to report your loses or fraudulent accounts immediately to credit bureaus. The 3 credit bureaus offer this service and you can also receive them through this site.

You can receive your credit report at no-cost here, hassle-free alternative monitoring your credit on a daily basis and notifying you via email if changes have been detected. You can also switch to EMV-enabled credit cards. These smart cards have stronger fraud protection than traditional credit cards. You will get a unique PIN and your card’s microchip will make it more difficult for thieves to get your identity. Fiserv in partnership with the U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo, Chase, and other credit unions has been introducing smart cards. So inquiring at your bank about smart cards is an important decision.

Phishing

Phishing is a thief’s attempt to get sensitive information about someone such as passwords, usernames and credit card details by pretending to be a trustworthy entity. Online attackers tend to build phishing kits selling them to other scammers who love to launch these information-stealing campaigns. Some of these kits only include two webpages. Attackers tend to buy these kits on visible websites or at underground forums. Some of them even know some PHP and can customize their sites in no time.

What do you do? You have to be careful when you click on links and verifying that links are pointing to the right address is important. For instance, if you are going to click on a link, mouse over the link before clicking on it to check whether the link is the same. Check for spelling and grammar errors in incoming emails. This can be a sign that the message is a phishing scam.

Hacking

Hacking is the act of breaking into a computer. To avoid being caught by a hacker, you need to take a proactive approach to computer security. Your are better off using your home wireless network than a public Wi-Fi hotspot as the latter is very popular and an easy target for hackers. If you need to access a Wi-Fi spot anyway, you are better off checking the name of the connection, as hackers tend to use names similar to a legitimate network waiting for you to log on to their fake network.

Using a password manager is another important step.1Password is a useful service you can use to store and create login information for tons of sites you can enter with just the press of a little button. If you are going to create the password yourself, make your password is long avoiding dictionary words. Including symbols and numbers is also paramount, and avoiding to write the password down is useful too. Fraud and cyber attacks are important aspects of cyber security, and you need to be prepared for them if you are going to use social media, Facebook, email and other things.

Here’s a quick summary of 7 tip to use online to stay safe:

  1. Yes, you do want to install updates
  2. Use antivirus software – but don’t bank on it
  3. Keep your passwords unique
  4. Use a password manager
  5. Monitor your Credit
  6. Use two-factor authentication
  7. Monitor your online activity