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4 Easy Life-Saving Steps You Need To Prevent Identity Theft – Ep. 15
Every 2 seconds someone’s identity is stolen. So what are you doing to protect yourself?
Identity theft is one of the fastest-growing crimes in America. In this episode, we’re here to help you protect yourself, your loved ones, your identity, and your credit. Today we’ll dive into these 4 easy life-saving steps, let’s do this!
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Resources & Links
LastPass – https://www.lastpass.com/
Identity Theft Monitoring – Message Me “Credit” on Instagram
Annual Credit Report – https://annualcreditreport.com
Instagram – https://instagram.com/aimeecerka
Podcast Keypoints
0:00 – Episode Sponsorship
1:07 – Episode Overview
2:48 – Identity Theft & Misuse Of Our Data
3:20 – Utilizing Secure Passwords
4:10 – Password System
5:40 – Multi Factor Authentication
7:02 – Identity Theft Monitoring
7:40 – Annual Credit Report
8:37 – Document Protection
10:30 – Sending Group Emails
11:45 – Recap
12:42 – Challenge
Frustrated that you aren’t making the progress that you should within your finances? Create an unshakable money mindset with the Money Mindset Mastery Checklist
Read It! 4 Easy Life Saving Hacks To Prevent Identity Theft
This episode of the Your Money Your Life podcast is brought to you by the Money Mindset Mastery Checklist.
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Every two seconds, someone’s identity is stolen. So, what are you doing to protect yourself?
$200 billion was stolen in 2020 alone, and that’s just the part that was actually reported. So, can you really afford not to protect yourself? I don’t think so.
But what can you actually do? That’s what we’re gonna be talking about in today’s episode. So, let’s do this!
Welcome to the Your Money Your Life podcast. I’m your host, Aimee Cerka.
After my husband and I faced three major financial roadblocks in the last six years, I felt like I wasn’t doing all that I could and I had let my family down. It always felt like life was a struggle like I had to work harder than everyone else. It just came easy to them, and I didn’t feel worthy of success.
Until, a coach helped me see the successes in our experiences instead of our failures. This allowed me to create and implement systems to grow our network by 200,000+ while spending time with my loved ones and on my priorities. Now I help motivated women create the happiness, family life, financial security, and long-term wealth they deserve.
If you’re ready to eliminate stress, struggle, frustration and guilt within your finances, you’re in the right place. Welcome, I’m so glad you’re here!
All right! Welcome back to another episode of the Your Money, Your Life podcast!
We are talking today all about identity theft, and four easy lifesaving steps that you need to protect yourself; and we might have more because I get really passionate about this topic and people misuse our data all the freakin’ time. So, it’s even more important that we protect ourselves.
The first thing that you need to do is you need to be utilizing secure passwords.
This is not talking about remembering things. And honestly, we can’t really come up with secure passwords, okay? You have to be using a tool for this.
Your pet’s names, your children’s names, birthdays, all of those things. They’re not secure. It’s just not. Please stop.
Oh, my goodness, this is something that my husband still tries to do and if you’re listening babe, you know, I love you, but we need to work on your password habits. But utilizing secure passwords, these are not passwords that you have to remember. And each site should have different passwords as well. Because if they hack into one, they can get into all of them if you use the same password over and over again.
You know I’m big on systems, so use this system for this. LastPass, okay? It’s free for like personal use. I do have a paid plan, but that’s because of my business and like having my team have access to certain passwords that they need to have access to. But beyond that, it’s free.
You only have to come up with one password. Use random things, don’t make it personal for you. You have to change, they call it your Master Password, and you have to change your Master Password, I think it’s probably like twice a year that they make you change it. So when they make you change it, it’s a little frustrating because then you have to work to remember a new one.
So when you come up with this obscure password, that’s your Master Password, write it down in a secure place. This does not mean putting it on like the home like on a sticky note on your computer or saving it on the front page of your phone, but finding a secure place to put it. Whether it’s locking it in hidden safe, which is something that I do, but finding somewhere secure to keep it then you only have to remember one password.
There’s a password generator inside the app, and then it memorizes it for you. They have extensions on the computer so that you can autofill it, they have apps on your phone so that you can either copy and paste or autofill when you need things, but you have to use secure passwords. Okay?
Which brings us to the second point here: multi-factor authentication.
Especially for those of you that are running businesses, listen, Facebook, Instagram, turn on two-factor, multi-authentication, right now. Pause if you have to, but if you’re listening on your phone, it should be able to keep going and just go take care of this, it’s really simple. It’s in the settings under Privacy.
What happens is when you log in, or where someone else got your password and tried to log in, it sends a text to your phone, and you have to input that number before you can log in. There are too many people that are getting hacked. And especially as business owners, there are people that are hacking the accounts, and then you’re never recovering them again. So if you’re running your business using Facebook or Instagram, this is like a necessity.
But even that, like you’re putting your friends and family in jeopardy by not having the two-factor authentication turned on because if you get hacked, you’ve opened the door that your friends or family can too. And it’s so simple to do, it takes two seconds. So even if a hacker gets your password, they would need your phone to identify and verify and access your account, which if you’re using utilizing a secure password, that’s already decrease the likelihood. So you’re protecting yourself, okay?
The third thing that we need to do, third step you can take to protect your identity has to do with identity theft monitoring.
Now, this one to do on a regular basis would have a cost associated with that. I’m going to add some links in the show notes for you for the company that I’m currently utilizing.
But there are tons of companies out there that will monitor your identity. So this includes like dark web monitoring, this could be email monitoring, there’s another one thing included in there, I’m forgetting what it’s called at the moment. But most of the identity theft monitoring companies cover these things.
But at a minimum, if you’re saying I’m not going to pay for this, check your credit report on an annual basis, it should be creditreport.com, I’ll find that link and put it in the show notes as well. You can get access to your credit reports once a year from all three bureaus absolutely free. Check your credit reports and make sure that there’s nothing fraudulent on there. As a bonus, the identity theft monitoring company that I’m using currently also does credit restoration. So, they would take care of that as well.
If you have things that are incorrect on your credit report, because most of us do, there are so many different details that they have to get right for it to be legitimate on your credit report. Most people don’t have that. So, it’s an added bonus as well.
Again, all those links are in the show notes if you want more information on that, but there you go. Step number three, identity theft monitoring.
The fourth thing: store, and shred documents safely.
Now, if you have an Amazon addiction, like me, I’m raising my hand here. It’s like a healthy addiction, though, like I use it wisely, it’s not unnecessary.
All those packages we’re receiving, all the mail and letters you’re receiving, you have to remove your name and address from that. Somebody can steal your identity with your name and address alone. So every time we throw away a box without removing your information, you’re putting yourself at risk.
Same thing with documents that we get in the mail, take the name and address off. It’s really inexpensive to how to have a shredder. I believe like in my city, they actually have like a document shredding day or something that they have like the more commercial machines available that you just take yourself up there and they shred it for you type thing. Old credit/debit cards, the mails really big one that we see all the time.
And when you’re done with the bank statement or something, don’t throw it away. That all needs to be shredded because it does not take much information for your identity to be compromised. In fact, myself in, let’s see was that 2021? Was it 2020? I think it was 2020, somebody was trying to hack into one of my credit card login companies, and they actually somehow cracked the password, which is kind of interesting considering I had the secure passwords.
But they were trying to reset my username, and they were not able to do that. Because of that, I was able to catch it, we went and reset everything, and then it was all fine. But if we weren’t monitoring that, it could have been problematic.
So uhm, I that’s really the four steps that I had planned for you.
Last side note, just because this is a soapbox thing for me, if you were sending out emails to a group of people, blind, copy them in anytime that you were just ceasing people copying people on emails, you are misusing their data. And technically, you’re liable for the privacy policy breach, which I believe is either $1,000 Fine per incident, or 10,000, we’ll just say 1000, just be careful. But please, use people’s data responsibly. There is nothing more frustrating than doing all the things that you’re supposed to in somebody else is being careless.
If you have that responsibility, if you have that spot where you can be responsible for that, please use other people’s data responsibly as well. There are so many different laws, especially as a business owner, GDPR, and all of those things that we need to be, we need to keep integrity and do the right thing with people’s data as well. Which probably should save for another for another day. Okay?
So let’s recap today, four lifesaving steps that you need to protect your identity. The first one where we’re utilizing secure passwords, the tool that I use for that is LastPass. Again, that was free for you. Number two, we’ve turned on multi-factor authentication wherever we can. But at a minimum, Facebook, Instagram, those are the ones that I see hacked on a regular basis.
Number three, we have identity theft monitoring, either you’re paying for a subscription, they’re taking care of it for you, or you have set a reminder to check your credit reports yourself, one time a year. Number four, we are storing and shredding our documents safely. And the bonus tip was we are keeping an integrity, we’re keeping our responsibility when other people’s data falls into our responsibility. We are handling that in a professional secure manner.
All right. So, the challenge that I have for you today is to take action. Really any one of these is a great place to start. Ideally, implement all four of them because it’s just the starting point, and they’re so simple to do.
Then, I want you to let me know how you’re protecting yourself and send me a message on Instagram @aimeecerka. I can’t wait to hear from you. And we’ll see you next week for another episode of the Your Money Your Life podcast. Bye for now!
Thank you so much for listening to the Your Money Your Life podcast. My favorite place to hang out is on Instagram. You can find me at @aimeecerka. Send me a message or post a screenshot and tag me! I love hearing from podcast listeners.
When you’re ready to master your money, go to https://workwithaimee.com. You and I will work together to ditch financial stress and struggle for good with a customized plan that works for you, your goals, your priorities, your life. I’ll see you next time on the Your Money Your Life podcast.
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