Financial Security: Keeping Your Personal Information Safe

One of the best things you can do for your financial security is to protect your personal information. Scammers and identity thieves can use your personal financial information to help them get more money, leaving you to clean up a credit mess, and try to avoid being held liable for fraudulent purchases and new accounts.

Do Your Own Forensic Accounting

There are ways that you can keep your financial information safe so that you don't ever need a forensic accountant. Take a look:

Know Who You're Talking To on the Phone

Before you give out any financial information, make sure you know who you are talking to, and why they need your information. A reverse phone lookup can help you determine if someone is who he or she says. Check to see if the name and address on a public listing from a reverse phone directory matches. Or, if there is no public listing and only a private listing, it might indicate that someone shady doesn't want his or her true registered name known.

If you can't verify who you are talking to, don't give out any personal financial information. Even if you are pretty sure you know who it is, you need to be careful about what information you give out. Don't give full numbers -- even to someone you are pretty sure works for the bank or credit card company. These folks only need the last four digits of your account number, or your Social Security number, to verify your identity. Don't give out your information without having a very good reason to do so.

Protect Against Online Attempts to Steal Your Financial Information

In addition to make sure you are careful about what information you give out over the phone, you need to ensure that your information is safe online. Make sure that you only enter information into a secure site. A "lock" icon should be in the address bard of a secure site. Additionally, you can look at the URL for the "s" at the end of http. Any site that starts with "https" instead of "http" is usually considered secure.

You can also make sure that all the security software on your computer is up to date. That way, you will be less vulnerable to keyloggers, viruses and other malware. Be careful of using public computer wifi networks. It may seem like a lifesaver sometimes, but you should realize that many public networks have a very low level of encryption. Don't engage in matters of a financial nature while using a public network. That can make it easy for hackers and ID thieves to steal your identity -- or even get your username and password for visiting your bank web site. Once they have that information, it is usually a simple matter to begin draining your bank account.

There is no way to completely protect yourself. However, it is posssible to redcue the chances that you will be a victim. By protecting your prviate personal information, and being very picky about whom you give access to information about yourself, you can decrease the chance that you will be a victim of a financially costly scam.