As the use of the Internet becomes more and more entrenched in our daily lives, identity theft is becoming a bigger problem. The most recent statistics available from 2021 indicate that around 11% of Australians experienced some type of personal fraud, including credit card fraud, identity theft, and other scams.
What can you do to help protect yourself from these scams?
Personal Information
Be careful of anyone asking for your personal information. Particularly from sources that you are not expecting. It’s one thing to provide information if you are ordering online, or in a store, but if you get calls, emails or texts, unexpectedly asking for your personal information or requests for money, be very wary.
Some of the current scams are hard to detect, so question thoroughly what is being asked of you, and don’t be afraid to hang up on callers or anyone else who is putting pressure on you to send money.
One scam currently making the rounds is using AI-generated voice impersonation of someone you know, claiming to be in a financial emergency and asking you to send funds. In this instance, don’t be afraid to hang up, and call the person back to verify their identity.
Credit Card
Check your credit card balance frequently, looking for unauthorised transactions. Often fraudsters will make small purchases, hoping you won’t notice.
If you use a debit card for online or retail purchases, you are exposing yourself to more risk. One suggestion is to set up a separate account with a small balance. Only use the debit card connected to that account for online or retail purchases. You can greatly reduce your risk of exposure and loss. You will have to top up the card frequently, but that is better than losing your entire account balance.
Destroy Old Documents
You have files or boxes of receipts, invoices, statements and the like. All of these contain personal financial information, you don’t want unscrupulous people to have access to.
Destroy these documents when they are no longer relevant. You can do it yourself if you only have a small amount or employ a document shredding service. A good document shredding service can also help with destroying old computer media, such as CDs. DVDs. and hard drives which might contain sensitive personal and financial data.
Use Strong Passwords
With the rise of the Internet, it seems like every application you use, wants a password. Don’t use the same password on multiple accounts. Using the same password, for your email, your bank, your brokerage account, Facebook, etc. only increases your risk.
You can use a password manager to create and store all of your passwords. This keeps you from having to remember dozens of passwords or having to write them down, where they suffer the risk of being lost or stolen.
Use 2 Factor Authentication where you can. 2FA using text or email is subject to being hacked and hijacked. Google Authenticator, Authy and other tools provide you with a secure way to verify your identity in the event your personal information is hacked or breached.
