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Happy Anniversary Equifax Breach

[/fusion_text][fusion_text]Luke Bryan says, “I believe the days go slow and years go fast.” I think he’s right. Can you believe it’s already been a year since Equifax exposed millions of people’s personal information in a massive data breach (myself included)? That’s an important milestone because data like that doesn’t get used by criminals right away. Typically they wait for things to cool down and then get to work on stealing people’s identities.

I guess you could say that this is a public service announcement to tell you not to let your guard down. That’s exactly what the thieves are hoping you do. Over the next year it’s even more important to continue to safeguard your information. Let’s review the bare minimum you should be doing to protect yourself.

  1. Check your three credit reports annually (www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action). It’s free and easy. Better yet sign up for Credit Karma or another free service that monitors your credit reports monthly. Then log in regularly to make sure there are no new accounts.
  2. Never ever email unprotected documents that include things like your Social Security number, account number, or passwords for your investment accounts. Always send such documents through a secure email provider. We use Citrix ShareFile.

There are many other smart practices you can adopt, but this is a blog, not a novel. So we’ll stop there.[/fusion_text][separator style_type=”single” top_margin=”” bottom_margin=”” sep_color=”” icon=”” width=”” class=”” id=””][fusion_text]

Legal Disclaimer: These posts do not constitute an offer or recommendation to buy or sell any securities or instruments or to participate in any particular investment or trading strategy. They are for informational purposes only. CTW gathers its data from sources it considers reliable. However, CTW makes no express or implied warranties regarding the accuracy of this information or any opinions expressed by the author and may update or change them without prior notification.

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