With the new year comes new reminders to protect your financial identity. Scammers are very adept at finding out information about your personal life that could provide clues to your financial life as well. They can use online, telephone, and email as effective ways to get information from or about you that could end up costing your financial wellbeing.
There is certainly no shortage of opportunities for thieves to extract information from your online profile or posts so be aware of everything you put on social media — or better yet, just avoid it when possible.
You’ve probably seen (or maybe even participated in) some of the popular “polls” on Facebook that offer entertaining distractions like your Elf Name for simply inserting your father’s middle name, the street you grew up on, and the month you were born. Notice anything suspicious about those qualifying questions? Yes, they’re often the same security questions you fill out when signing up for a credit card or other online offer. Talented scammers can use that information to help confirm your identity and take calculated guesses at your security questions and/or passwords. It’s best to just ignore those opportunities and forego the desire to discover your Soap Opera character!
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