How to safeguard our personal and financial data?

As technology in this world improved day by day, our personal and financial information are getting easily and easily to be stolen and misused. People can access our personal data as well as our financial data easily trough internet. Other than that, they may also get the data by steal our wallets and purses that contains our identification; steal our mail, for example, bank and credit card statements; steal files or bribe employees who have access to files with our information and many more. Most of people that been stolen their personal and financial data will suffer financial loss. For example, the thief might use our bank account or credit cards. So, we need to take some important steps to prevent and also to safeguard our personal and financial information.

First of all, we should increase our awareness of how and when we use our personal information. By doing this, we can reduce the chance that our personal information from being misuse. This can be done by follow some steps suggested below.

Firstly, never give personal or financial information over the phone or Internet unless you initiated the contact. If you are told to send your information through email or phone, do not entertain it. It can be easily stolen.

Secondly, use strong password and try to avoid using your date of birth as password.
Most importantly, memorize the password. Do not record the password on paper that carry with you.

Thirdly, check your monthly credit card and bank statements for unusual activity. If you found any unusual record in your statement, contact the relevant authorities to check out with it.

Fourthly, use a firewall program on your computer, especially if you leave your computer connected to the Internet 24 hours a day, and never download files that sent by strangers. It helps to prevent hacker and cracker to obtain our information.

Lastly, shred receipts and copies of documents with personal information if they are no longer needed. Some identity thief might rummage through your trash to get your personal data. So, if we shred it, they would never had chance to look at it.

Other than preventing, if we suspect that we had become a victim of personal and financial data thieves, we should act immediately. We should recall all the activities that might cause the data stolen and try to remember the person that we suspected. Then, we should call the police and immediately close the account that had been theft.

As a conclusion, prevention is better than cure. We should always alert and aware of the confidentiality of our personal and financial data. We can stop it before it happen.