OT: My tips for preventing Identity and Financial Theft
Researcher is right, if someone knows your password and login they would be able to sell all your stocks or buy stocks you don’t want to buy. I’m not sure about transferring money to their/thief’s own account. Usually it requires other login like your online bank login or ACH transfer login/password/confirmation. And a good broker will call/talk to you before changing the account owner or account address.
So what I think you can do to prevent these problems:
1. Never use public/other people computer to access your account or other account (such as email account) that has email about your other login and password to other sites including your brokerage account. That’s why I didn’t open my account nor buy or sell anything when I was on vacation last week. there’s too many risks.. I know a friend of mine show me a keylogger program which it will record the password that people typed in the PC (though it is shown as ***** when you type doesn’t mean no one can see it)
2. Don’t click any link from email. Banks and brokerage will tell you to login directly from their website by typing their web address in the address bar. When in doubt call the customer rep. report/forward phishing mail to the company that is targeted.
3. Don’t browse to websites that is not widely known or legit. Visit only trusted sites. These are the home/mother of all phishing and spyware program.
4. Never install any spam or phishing software in your computer. Prevent them by installing antispyware and antivirus from Norton (both software) or Microsoft antispyware. Install Firewall also.
5. If a pop up message saying you haven’t scan your PC or your PC is infected with spyware and tell you to click yes to scan don’t ever click yes. Don’t even ever click no. and don’t ever click the x mark on the top hand corner to close.. instead.. click alt-F4 to close the window.. even better open the task manager and end-task your browser and the pop up window.. you will lose all your websites that you have currently opened but that’s fine you can re open the browser and start again from beginning.
6. Don’t use unsecured wireless network or using your neighbour unsecured wireless network. Secured your network (password protect). Use VPN in you are accessing through public network
7. If you get those sypware and phishing scam anyway, stop all activities (including logging in to your brokerage and banking accounts) until you are 100% sure your PC is clean. Better safe than sorry…
Hope this helps.. I’ll add if I remember/come up with something else.. If anyone has any tips or experience please let us know… one thing for sure if you are a victim of identity theft.. it’s no fun at all.. and can be very frustrating..
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