Steps To Protect Your Financial Accounts

Even the largest firms are unable to keep their data systems from being hacked. That’s why it’s important to aggressively protect your financial accounts from hacking. This article presents a good review of the actions to not, and not to take, to maximize protection of their accounts.

You should also be wary of calls, texts and emails from someone claiming to work at your bank, brokerage, etc. There are plenty of horror stories of “banks” calling to tell you you need to change your PIN—armed with personal info like your Social Security Number—from the number associated with your bank, only to have it be a rather savvy scam. If you get a text, call your bank and ask to speak to someone. If they call you, ask if you can hang up and call back, no matter how urgent they make the situation seem. This is also true for a government agency like the IRS—chances are they are not calling you, and they certainly won’t call you and threaten you with jail time, though that is a common scam.