According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, hackers were able to retrive more than 13 million sensitive records this year alone. Unfortunately, most companies or people do not know the extent of what has been taken. Take the following precautions to help avoid this misfortune.
- Always keep your firewall, anti-malware and antivirus software up-to-date.
- Be sure to pick passwords that are very strongly coded. Use upper and lower case letters, numbers punctuation marks and symbols. NEVER use common words or names. There are free programs out there that will generate and store all of your log-in credentials on your personal computer.
- If one account has been compromised, act like they all have been and watch over all statements. If your Social Security number has been taken, be sure to place a security freeze on your credit report.
- Be sure to be surfing the web using https://. Also, try to not use public Wi-Fi to log into sensitive accounts.
- Don’t be a clicker…bad things can happen when you click on a suspicious download or pop-up.
Just take a few extra steps to save yourself some major headaches!!
September 9th is National 401(k) Day! This day is an annual celebration to promote the importance of participation in employer-sponsored profit sharing and 401(k) plans. Ignoring these plans should not be an option! Do you stop for a coffee everyday? Put that money towards your retirement instead! Would you like to reduce your income taxes? Participate in the retirement plan and do just that as the contributions are deducted before your taxes are calculated (except for Social Security taxes). Does your employer offer a match? If the answer is yes, realize you are throwing free money away by not participating! Do you have an old 401(k) from a previous employer? Most employers allow you to roll your 401(k) balance into their plan and if they do not, you can open an IRA to capture those assets. 