I know I should…

This or That
When it comes to the behaviors that can prevent identity theft and privacy breeches this sentence is all to common. Most of us have been to the training class or read the website that gave us the basics. Don’t open attachments from email senders you don’t know, don’t download files, don’t give out information over the phone, always type in the urls of your online banking sites. It is a familiar routine. Why don’t we do those things? The answer is simple, because we are lazy, and changing habits is hard.
That is why today we are going to look at some of those common mistakes and solutions that even the laziest of web browsers can implement.
Issue: Typing in your banks Url’s…
Solution: Type them in once and bookmark them. Once you do this you can simply click on the name.
Issue: Remembering a truly random password, or several, is hard.
This is where a basic knowledge of chess pays off. The knight in chess moves forward one and over two. You can do the same thing to make a random password. Choose a letter and move in this pattern for a per specified number of digit’s (say, 8) and then add a set of significant set of digits. Then all you have to remember is the letter, and the digits. S29 isn’t so hard to remember.
Paying bills when the company calls is simpler.
Get the numbers for the 1-800 services that you call from the toll free 411 service and program them into your phone. When you get a call simply tell them you will call right back. Then call back, and you can be sure you are talking to the right people.
See, there is always a way to be safe without having to make things too complex.
* * *
