There is a lot of information on Identity Theft and how to protect you out there. There are a few major players in this arena that can help. One is big on prevention; another is small on prevention, but bigger on helping you clean up after the fact. Armed with a little information from other sources, you can make the call on which is right for you.

But, there is another area that needs to be addressed. And that is keeping your personal financial data secure on your PC.

Internet Security Software. First, make sure your Internet Security software is installed and up to date. If you are bothered by the high annual prices, consider the consequences to not having any. Your PC will be attacked and taken over by small little applications that run in the background and use it for various devious purposes. Not only that, your Internet browser will be stuffed full of horrible, no good, very bad websites that pop-up whenever they so desire. And, they desire a lot. So, you must protect you PC in this manner first. The major players in this arena are Symantec Anti-virus with their Internet Security Suite, and then McAfee with their similar product. There is another that is worthy of consideration and can be used for free as long as you don’t mind running manual updates. It is called AVG free and you can find it at http://www.grisoft.com/.

Safe PC Data Practices. The next bit of advice seems like common sense, but believe it or not, most people do not consider it. With high speed, always on connections to the Internet the norm, most leave their PC turned on for convenience sake. You can walk over to it and check your email and walk away. And, that’s ok, but you should not place your logon information to your Internet banking website or your credit card information in any sort of text file on the PC itself. There are applications out there that are looking for PCs onto which they can be loaded and then crawl your hard drive looking for these types of information. It’s a good way to get money taken out of your accounts through completely stealth-like means. Then, when you go on to check your balances or pay bills – it’s gone. Make and keep a journal of your passwords and logon information in a spiral bound notebook near to your PC. One other option here involves using software that keeps your passwords stored in one program on your PC and is password protected itself. Either way, the concept is to prevent easy access to this data.

Remember it is your money, and if you leave access to it wide-open, you can lose almost everything you have overnight. Then, the hassle of dealing with trying to get it back will be one of the most frustrating tasks you will ever undertake.

Need help getting on top of your budget? We recommend You Need A Budget. YNAB is an easy-to-use budgeting tool that will help you take control of your finances and stop living paycheck to paycheck. Get Started Today.


Share and Enjoy:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•