One of my clients emailed me on Saturday. She’d recently shopped at a Dallas area Target store to pick up some items for Christmas and had just read the news about the credit card breach at Target stores across the country. She was concerned and wanted to know what to do.
et me have a quick show of hands; how many of you have the same password for all your online accounts? That’s too many! One of the easiest practices to put into place to protect yourself from identity theft is to implement a password overhaul plan. We shop, bank, pay bills, communicate, share photos, update our status, network, and conduct business online.
I’m amazed at the level of technology available on our college campuses. For those who are my age, we had an electric typewriter that may have been self-correcting. In order to access a computer we had to schedule time in a special facility on campus and even then, programming was done on punch cards. Things have come a long way since then.
Did you catch the story last week about the toddler who bought a car on eBay with her dad’s smart phone? Sorella Stoute, a 14 month girl in Portland, Oregon, was playing with her dad’s smart phone. She opened the eBay app on dad’s phone and submitted the winning bid on a 1962 Austin Healey.
Identity theft, and the fraud associated with it, is a growing problem in the US and across the globe. Out of 2.06 million complaints reported to the Federal Trade Commission, 370,800 were identity theft related. In Texas, the rate of identity theft complaints rose 17% from 2011 to 2012, or 28, 299 up from 24,162.
It’s tax season! If you haven’t already filed, you have 38 more days before it’s due. For most filers, this is a busy time. I’m pulling my information together and organizing it for my CPA to make his job a little easier when we meet next week. This is also a busy time for identity thieves. While they never rest, they love this time of year. The amount of data on our returns is truly amazing.
Last fall, I received an email from the security department of my bank notifying me there’d been a questionable charge on my debit card. I first thought it was a phishing email so I called the security department of my bank to find out it wasn’t a false email. A charge for $4.58 had been made on my account at a New York sporting goods store. Not having traveled from Dallas to New York recently, I worked with the security department to identify my legitimate charges & payments and refute the ones that weren’t mine. We then shut down that debit card and they mailed me a new one.
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