by Charles Miller

Last week I related the story of Ruben the taxi driver who had his identity stolen when one of his competitors commandeered his fares. I never knew exactly how that happened, but I assume Ruben was using something simple and easily-guessed, such as his dog's name, as his HotMail.com password and that was easy enough for his competitor to guess. Ruben learned that his email is a gateway to other accounts and that failing to protect his email account led to his web site being hacked. To be sure, Ruben now knows to use a cryptographically-secure password that is a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols.

Because your email address serves as an important gateway to accessing so many of your other online accounts, I now recommend for people to consider setting up a separate email account strictly for their critical accounts. I have an email address I use exclusively with my bank, and I have never told anyone else what that address is. Whenever I received an email at that address I know it came from the bank, and when I received an email (allegedly) from my bank addressed to my regular email I know that email has to be a fake.

For important bank or investment accounts you should add an extra layer of security by enabling two-factor authentication (2FA) wherever possible. For me it is a nuisance that my bank has to call my home phone with a verification code before I can login online, so I keep telling myself that convenient is the opposite of secure.

U.S. federal law provides that once per year you are allowed a free copy of your credit report from each credit reporting company. The “Big Three” companies: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion make this easy by providing one web site AnnualCreditReport.com to make your requests. Reviewing your credit reports could help you catch signs of identity theft, and doing so once per year is better than nothing.

Freezing your credit report can help protect you from identity theft and fraud by making it difficult for anyone, including you, being able to open new credit accounts in your name. Federal law requires all credit bureaus to offer credit freeze and un-freeze free of charge, but you must contact each one individually to do this. Once again: convenient is the opposite of secure.

Finally, I have long recommended being cautious when sharing information. Financial institutions and government offices can require you provide personal identifying information, but when dealing with private companies I am more restrictive of the personal information I am willing to share. It is not that I do not trust those companies; it is because I know that companies having their customer data stolen off their servers by hackers are daily occurrences.

It would be nice to be able to understand why a company needs my personal information, how it will be protected, and who it will be shared with; but few employees even know the answers to those questions. When the gym where I work out installed a Chinese-made internet-connected biometric-activated turnstile, the owner wanted all customers to record their fingerprints. I explained that I did not want mine stored in a Chinese database that could be hacked online, and fortunately the owner agreed to a compromise.

My point about not sharing my fingerprints is that it is wise to pick and choose whom you trust. I can probably trust that my bank has a reasonably good level of security to safeguard its databases from hackers. The neighborhood gym? They are not so security-aware and probably did not even know that their fingerprint database would be sent out to be stored on a server accessible by the Chinese Communist Party. So now hopping over the turnstile is part of my exercise routine.

By no means is this short column a definitive list of all the things you can do to protect yourself, but it should be a good place to start.

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Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant with decades of IT experience and a Texan with a lifetime love for Mexico. The opinions expressed are his own. He may be contacted at 415-101-8528 or email FAQ8 (at) SMAguru.com.

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