Protect Yourself From Getting Your Money Hacked
It is becoming more and more common to use our computers to manage our money. There are now dozens of online services that pool all our accounts and present them in a fashion that is easy to read and that foster enthusiasm for saving, investing and having an over all feeling of well-financial being. (See #2, but the whole article is pretty good 
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While these sites are wonderful, there is an inherent level of risk that must be taken into account. Its hard to imagine that there are people out there that want to get into your account and divert your funds into the fog of the internet cloud but they do. You are probably thinking “Well, thats some other person, not me. How could they find me out of all the people out there?” Its not hard. In fact its actually pretty easy.
With the internet connecting people everyday, all it takes for one person to figure out one little loophole, or little crack in some encryption. They might not do anything with it, but they will probably post it in order to show how good they are and bask in some sort of leet black-hat light. But there will be someone else who snags this script and just happens to know of a coffee shop that has an open connection (so that regular users can get online as fast and easy as possible) and boom, this new person is browsing your computer like the Sunday paper. Hope your passwords aren’t on there because they are getting copied.
Now this all might be a little extreme, but if you multiply by the number of people that don’t pay attention to what they are connecting to and the number of scam artists that are willing to try it, you get a pretty significant amount.
I am not saying that this will happen to everyone, just that it can happen to anyone. There are few things to protect yourself:
- Don’t check your accounts on a public computer. You don’t know where that computer has been and you don’t want your account displayed on a computer that has been with so many other computers. Gross.
- Be extremely wary of public internet access. Airports are very popular for hackers to sit and anonymously cruise just about any laptop connected. It literally takes seconds on an unsecured network.
- Only use encrypted sites. 128-bit encryption is the most widely used industry standard, look for a padlock on your browser or a change in color in your url bar. This can still be hacked with enough time and CPU horsepower. I have heard of servers that have 16 Xenon cores just sitting in the corner for this very purpose. Take the time to use complicated passwords with symbols and cApS!#$%
- Keep your spyware and anti-virus up to date. Its a little expensive but consider the alternative. One of the most common and easy to use is keystroke capture app. These are legitimate programs that can be stripped down and covertly loaded onto almost any machine. Then the keys are dumped into a small, simple text file and sent to the originator. That’s it.
- Don’t click links that come in your email. These will be asking you to log in and “update your information” and the site looks completely real. Technically, they almost are. They are linking to the real images and using CSS and HTML right from the real site but have changed the domain name a tiny bit. Hover over any links to see where they really go. The best thing you can do is go to the site manually and check with the fraud department. It takes about 4 seconds and they will be happy to tell you that you are looking at a scam and could you please forward it. Along with all the other billions that get sent. Just be one of those billions that hasn’t had they entire accounts drained.
- >>HALLO DEER SIRE. I AM FROM A COUNTRY YOU HAVE NEVER HEARD OF AND ITS A STATISTICAL MIRACLE THAT I FOUND YOU. I AM OF INSANELY RICH ROYALTY AND WOULD LIKE TO USE YOUR ACCOUNT TO TRANSFER SUM FUNS IN THE AMOUNT OF $324,543,654,232,987,234.00 (SAME AMOUNT IN WORDS OR VICE VERSA) TO YOUR ACCOUNT FOR TAX PURPOSES. YOU WILL GET 20% FOR THESE SERVICES, PLEASE SEND ME YOUR INFO AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. BLESSINGS UNTO YOU AND YOUR FAMILY.<< Honestly. Really? This is still working? How?
These banks and brokerage firms are not required to reimburse you, so be careful out there. Use caution, common sense and a little due diligence and you will be better off as well as better financially protected. Let me know what you think. $
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Comments
Anyone who wants to see Nigerian 419 scammers get exposed should visit http://www.ebolamonkeyman.com/
It’s hilarious.
@ The Dream: Thats a great site, full of good content. Amazing that people still do this and even more amazing is that there still seems to be a market for it.
Thanks. This is valuable info. Stumbled it.