Hey folks,

As some of you are aware I work for a bank fraud department as an investigator and we routinely receive alerts when the "alarms" go off regarding illicit activity that has the ability to cause great concern for our personal info and financial info security. Recently my team and I were made aware of an organized effort that has netted a criminal element in eastern Europe over 500 million email address and over 1 billion financial account numbers (mainly credit card numbers). This represents a direct threat to personal info which is more damaging than their financial information gain as this can lead directly to other forms of personal info hacking including, but not limited to, social media, personal contact info, employment info, ect.  The main reason for this post is so that YOU can be aware of potential threats and update financial website passwords, email and social media passwords, and pin numbers for ATM debit cards and credit cards. An example of a good password is one that does NOT represent personal info such as yours or your families dates of birth, family names, or anything that can connect your personal info to your password. I know that many of us are knowledgeable about passwords but far far too many still use their date of birth, moms maiden name, brother sister or childs date of birth, inlaws name or combination of the above info. PLEASE DO NOT FALL INTO THIS TRAP, IT MAY COST YOU DEARLY!!!

Here's an example of a good password: **take the first 12 words of the first sentence in this post***As some of you are aware I work for a bank fraud*** Now take the first letter of each word: (a s o y a a i w f a b f). Now insert RANDOM numbers and symbols and even make some of the letters upper case. Your finished password could look something like A@soy7a1ai*Wf%abF  . This is a strong password that can be easily made stronger by using a few more letters and /or symbols. A 12 -16 character password such as this is considered to be a very strong password in all applications.

Even with a very strong password your info can still be gotten so be diligent, check your financial records often and report ANY irregularities to your bank, no matter how seemingly irrelevant it may be. ALWAYS update your passwords every 3 months (min 4 times per year), change your PIN number for your bank cards and credit cards at least every 6 months and do NOT use your own or your spouses or childrens DOB (grandfathers or grandmothers is ok to use) as a pin number. (PIN number = Personal Identification Number and is used to access your bank account or credit card account.) I keep an address book beside my computer for user names and passwords... and I don't care how good a hacker is they CANNOT read what's on my desk in a closed book.

We always tell our loved ones to "drive carefully", "be safe", "don't take needless risks" ect, well we need to take some of our own advice and protect ourselves from prying eyes that will use your personal info for whatever they want, including making false ID's and applying for a variety of bank services that will leave you on the hook to fix the mess, and it can be a very daunting job (ID theft is rising every day and is VERY expensive to clean up and restore your good name).


Be safe folks  , you'll thank yourself for it.

With such a title,  i was expecting spam (cannot see thread creator on mobile site). .

thanks for the advice xVoodoo.

This came to mind:
http://xkcd.com/936/

Thanks for the info Voodoo!

Thx Voodoo

Glad to be of some service. I see this stuff daily and I hear the stories from good folks about how messed up their lives have become because of financial fraud. This is definitely a case of "an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure".

Well, since I just had to declare bankruptcy, identity theft is less of a concern. :P

Thanks to the original poster for the info.