Protecting Your Online Financial Accounts

There’s almost no limit to the number of ways cyber criminals can steal our sensitive information and hack our systems. It seems that each week brings more news about large companies announcing that customer data was accessed by hackers. In the past month, both Google and Facebook acknowledged that customer data was compromised. In Facebook’s case it was data of over 50 million people. Google reported 500,000 customers were affected. Here are effective and simple things you can do that will go a long way toward protecting your online financial accounts: 

Browser

• Use a different web browser for your financial accounts than you do for Google, GMail, Facebook, Amazon, and other web sites. 
• If you use Chrome, for example, for your regular web browsing, use Firefox or Safari for your online financial accounts. It prevents hackers from taking advantage of the vulnerabilities related to using one browser.
• Clear your history or cache before and after using the browser to access your accounts.

Accounts and Password

• Use a different password for each of your financial accounts.
• Use different passwords for your email and Facebook accounts. Facebook is a big target for hackers. If they obtain your Facebook password, the next step is your email account. From there, they target your bank accounts. By using different passwords, you’re adding an extra layer of protection to your important financial accounts. 
• Definitely don’t use your Facebook password for your online financial accounts.