3 Things Busy People Can do Right Away to Protect Their Identity! 

October is National Cybersecurity Month and author Alex Haslam wrote the 5 Easy Ways to Protect Yourself Online for the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA). These are definitely five things that you will want to do to protect yourself from a breach on your personal information. https://staysafeonline.org/blog/5-easy-online-safety-tips/

However, after reading the article, I must confess, I thought about it briefly and then closed the article. Now I ask myself what is so hard with doing these five things? Even though I am a busy college student, I reread the article and decided that these are three things I will start doing right now!

3 Things Busy People Can do Right Away to Protect Their Identity!

1. Stop saving and storing my personal information on numerous sites I visit regularly. Even with SSL certification, any of these sites can be hacked. Think Target and other similar breaches. I went to my Google account and deleted all my saved passwords. As a current college student, I’m frequently visiting websites to complete my coursework. I was amazed at how many stored passwords I had! I now have to enter everything when visiting these sites, but I feel like I finally took some action to protect my personal information. You can never be too careful when It comes to protecting your identity!

2. Start creating strong and unique passwords for all my accounts. I am going to keep a secure list of these in a word doc or file that only I can access. This has always been a chore for me to create unique passwords and store them in a safe place that is easily accessible. If you have or want to enable two-step authentication, then storing your passwords in a note file seems like a great option. This is the first step in Haslam’s 5 Easy Ways to Protect Yourself Online. I think I just convinced myself to do this, too!

3. Always make sure the URL is secure when providing personal information. Especially when shopping online this holiday season, make sure the URL starts with “https://” because then you will know that your connection is encrypted and secure, and you can safely provide debit and credit card information, addresses, and other personal information.

Please, if you do nothing else during this National Cybersecurity Month, at least consider these three things going forward!

You can also check out this Secure Plus Checking account at ChoiceOne Bank https://www.choiceone.com/personal/banking/checking/. This account comes with ID Protection for you and your family.