Month: October 2020

Financial Hacks

The last post, I talked about cyber hacking, but this month let’s talk about when Equifax credit report data was hacked in 2017 when names, social security numbers, birth date, driver’s license and addresses were taken from millions of people (Smith 2017; Oliver, 2017).  Smith (2017), knew of the breach that started in late May and ended in Early June 2017 but didn’t advise the public until 2017.  In that gap from all affected consumers being hacked until public release, multiple people’s lives could have been ruined.

This breach means that when the data is sold in the black market or dark web, thieves can open lines of credit for the rest of your life.  The only way to combat this is to freeze your credit from all three credit bureaus:

My journey in doing so means going to each of these sites and setting this up.  When I wanted to pull my credit for housing, a new credit card, etc. I would have to unfreeze the account for less than a few days and refreeze it so that my credit can be checked.  Unfortunately, this has become an inconvenience, as it can mean a delay in many major life situations, like getting a new job.  However, this is a minor inconvenience as opposed to finding out you were hacked, proving your real identity, and recovering if you can your life.

The advice to freeze your credit report is one way to protect yourself.  Another is to check your credit report.  Every year you get 1 free credit report from each of the three credit reporting agencies.  Things that appear in one report may not appear in another, so it is key to routinely check all three credit reports.  A link to do so can be found here:

or by phone:

  • 1-877-322-8228

Resources:

Storytime:  The Hacker!

Systems and companies get hacked.  The biggest one in the tech sector is Yahoo back in August 2013 where 3 billion accounts were targeted. and again in 2014 where 500 million accounts were targeted unrelated (Larson, 2017). As reported vital information that was compromised from the yahoo hacks was the sign-in information, most importantly, passwords.

Now fast forward to December 2019, and I got an email saying that there was an attempt to get into my personal social media accounts.  Not saying that the Yahoo incident is at all related since it could have come from multiple other sites I use.  However, it illustrates a key aspect of living a digital life… Are we really safe from hackers?  Thankfully they didn’t succeed to access my account, but that won’t stop them in the future from trying my accounts again or yours.

Mark Goodman (n.d.a.), explains that there is an asymmetry in cyber threats, where the white hats (good guys) have to explore every possible corner to prevent a hack, whereas the hackers only have to find one weakness to hacking into a system.

Goodman (n.d.a., n.d.b.) in the Art of Charm podcast and Lewis Howes podcast proposed the following acronym: UPDATE, as one of many ways to protect yourself.

  • U – update frequently. (LastPass, 1Password)
  • P – passwords. Use a different password for every site and get a reliable password manager. Don’t use your Facebook account to login to other site.
  • D – downloads. Watch your downloads and be cautious about what you install. Download from authorized sources only.
  • A – administrator. Don’t run your computer using the administrator account (unless necessary).
  • T – turn off your computer. If it isn’t fully turned off it’s still accessible, especially when not in use, or at least the wifi.
  • E – encrypt. This scrambles your data unless you have the password and proper computational keys. There are 2 types: you can encrypt the data on your computer and encrypt the data as it is sent out using a VPN.

Resources: