How To Protect Your Identity Online

Protect Your Identity Online

Large components of our lives are kept online nowadays. From banking, receiving and paying bills, communicating with friends, and of course online shopping, we depend largely upon our electronic devices and the internet to keep ourselves organised. 

Along with this efficient method of organisation is a need to ensure your important details are kept safe and are foolproof. 

Read on for our tips on how to protect your identity online. 

Perfect your passwords

Many people fall victim to cyber identity theft due to poor passwords. It’s the easiest way theifs can gain access to your banking details and other important information. Make it more difficult by creating passwords that you can remember, but are also not obvious. 

A good rule to follow is ensuring your passwords has more than eight characters and a mixture of letters and numbers. The longer the password, the more difficult it is for a thief to crack it. Also avoid your partners or kid’s names and years of birth. These are commonly cracked codes, and don’t use the same password for every account. Keep them varied. 

Keep your Wi-Fi secure 

If you haven’t already, make sure that your Wi-Fi network at home is password protected to prevent others in your area from using your network and potentially completing malicious activity. 

Beware of bank scams

One of the easiest scams people fall victim to is bank fraud. If you receive an email from your bank or another institution asking for information, always call and verify the email with your bank before proceeding. Legitimate institutions don’t often ask for personal information via email. Also, be wary of any links that may be provided in emails as they can lead to fake websites designed to look like the real thing. 

Secure your social media

Social media can be great for reuniting with old schoolmates on facebook and sharing photos. But you need to be careful of what you share and always confirm that your privacy settings are set an an adequate level. We recommend using the ‘friends only’ setting to safeguard that only those you are friends with have access to your full profile. Additionally, be careful about what information you provide to your social media profiles. Details such as your phone numbers, address or even your children’s school can give a thief more knowledge to use. 

Now, don’t let any of this turn you away from organising your life online. Just be cautious with your information and you’ll be fine.