In case you hadn't heard, Russian hackers have managed to steal the passwords and other crucial data of more than 1.2 billion people from the Internet. Apparently a lot of Russians were very well trained in computer technology, but there aren't enough jobs for them all. So they sit around coming up with trouble to cause! (Putin should love these guys.)
Freeze your credit, Two Factor Authentification, DashLane
Also, it's worth remembering that the Internet was designed back in the 1960s as a tool for university researchers. It was never intended to be used for millions of online purchases and the many other ways people use it today, and ever since it blew up, people have been trying to retrofit it to make it secure enough to handle all this information.
My colleague Clark Howard, who is an expert on issues like identity theft, appeared on the show today and offered three simple steps everyone can take to protect themselves from having their financial accounts and other crucial items accessed by hackers like these. Here they are:
Freeze your credit. It's a simple process that, depending on the state, costs anywhere from nothing to $30. If you go to Clark's web site you'll find a credit freeze guide where you can go state by state and find out exactly how to do it. Why should you do this? Because if you do, someone can have your Social Security number and other information, but they still can't get credit as if they're you, because once your credit is frozen you receive a unique secret code and the hackers can't get it. What about people who need their ciredt? You can thaw it as often as you want with your secret code. It takes from one minute to four minutes. Depending what kind of loan or product you're seeking, you may only need to thaw one of your three reports. If it's something big like a mortgage you might need to thaw all three.
More and more banks, brokerage houses and mutual fund companies now offer something called Two Factor Authentification. It's an additional step where, once you put in your password, they freeze you right there and another screen pops up. As that happens, they send you a text with a one-time only secret code you have to enter. This adds 15 seconds to the process, but the value of it is that, although the Russians may have your bank user name and password, but they don't have your cell phone and they won't be able to obtain your secret code every time you sign in.
If you have lots of different user names and passwords for lots of different site, DashLane serves as an online wallet for all this information and also makes it possible for you to add one-time-only additional passwords as another barrier to access. DashLane controls the sign-in for every site you go to, and the hackers can't access the information you get from DashLane.
Nothing is ever foolproof, of course, but taking these three steps will make it much more difficult for hackers to access your accounts and make purchases or otherwise mess with your credit. It's bad enough that the Russians have taken Crimea! You don't let to let them get into your bank account too!
