Every day we log on to Web sites — some important ones — by typing in passwords. But how strong are the passwords you use? How long would it take a skilled hacker to decipher your passwords and use them to log into the same Web sites with your information? And if someone did this, what information would this hacker gain access to? Your bank account? Your Social Security number? Your home address? Creating strong passwords is essential today. Unfortunately, too many computer users still rely on simplistic passwords, passwords that could take a savvy hacker minutes to unlock. What are some of the bigger password mistakes people make? Too many will use a password that’s too easy to guess. They’ll enter the name of a child or a family pet. Maybe they’ll use their name or type in the name of the street on which they live. Others use the same password for every Web site they visit. Such a strategy is dangerous. If a cyber criminal determines that your password at one site is “fred1,” there’s nothing stopping this crook from using “fred1” to break into your online banking account. And that can lead to serious financial woes. Do you need to boost your password strength? Here’s some advice: Don’t use passwords that people who know you could guess. And don’t use passwords that are just a string of lowercase letters. The more complex your passwords, the longer it will take hackers to decipher them. To create complex passwords, you should always make them eight characters or longer. They should contain a mix of letters, symbols and numbers. Use both capital and lowercase letters. A password of “herkyjerky” is far easier to crack than is “He3r4yJErk.” Of course, you might wonder how you are going to remember these passwords. You might need to write them down. But make sure that you keep your list of passwords in a safe location. Don’t, for instance, keep your password list in the desk drawer immediately under your desktop computer. You can also store your passwords with such password sites as 1Password and LastPass. These programs will help you generate strong passwords and then save them in files that only you can access. This way, you won’t have to memorize dozens of complex passwords. A final tip? Don’t forget to change your passwords often. Even the strongest password can become dangerous if you rely on it for five years. Instead, change your passwords every three to six months. Changing passwords frequently will provide that extra bit of protection that you need today.

Website Password Strategies

View Resource Website Password Strategies
In the world today, consumers rely heavily on their credit and debit cards to make purchases both large and small. How many of us, after all, pay cash when fueling our cars? The odds are that you instead simply swipe your credit card at the pump. And then there’s online shopping. Most of us don’t hesitate to order everything from movies to music to electronics through the Web. Some of us even use debit cards to purchase our coffee on our morning commute to the office. There’s no denying that credit and debit cards are convenient to use. There’s no arguing that they’ve made our lives simpler. But they’ve also increased the chances that we could become the victims of identity theft. After all, if a thief steals your cash, you’re out some money. If that same thief steals your credit card or debit card, this criminal could make a series of unauthorized purchases in your name, continuing to spend until you finally notice that your card is missing. If thieves steal your credit or debit card account numbers, they could pile up the unauthorized purchases until you receive your next monthly statement and notice a large number of unusual transactions. It’s important, then, for consumers to take the steps necessary to protect themselves when using credit or debit cards. You don’t want to suffer from credit- or debit-card fraud. Using your cards safely Credit card providers agree on several tips for using credit and debit cards safely. First, they recommend storing your credit or debit cards in a safe place when you’re not carrying them with you. Treat these cards much like you’d treat cash or checks. We’re all more comfortable today with sending personal information through e-mail messages. But you should never send your credit-card or debit-card number to anyone in an e-mail message, even if you trust the recipient. It’s easy for hackers to intercept your e-mail messages. They’d love to have access to your credit- or debit-card account numbers. You also should never give out your credit or debit card number over the telephone unless you initiated the call. For instance, if you call a hotel to make reservations, it’s acceptable to give out your credit card number to secure that reservation. However, if someone calls you saying that they are from your credit-card issuer, never give this person your credit-card number. It could be a scammer trying to nab your personal information. Your credit-card issuer will never call you and then ask for your account number. Finally, study your credit card account statement every time it arrives. Search for any unusual transactions that you don’t remember making. They could be evidence that a thief has someone gained access to your credit card account number. If you use debit cards, make sure to check your bank statements regularly to make sure that no one has gained access to your card to make unauthorized purchases or withdrawals. Added protection Consumers who are hoping to avoid credit card and debit card fraud should follow other industry leader suggestions as well. First, you should shred your bank account and credit card account statements before recycling them or throwing them in the trash. It’s an old-fashioned way to gain your personal information, but some identity thieves aren’t above digging through your trash to find your old statements. You should also shred any unsolicited pre-approved credit card offers that find their way to your mailbox. Some thieves might use these offers to open credit card accounts in your name, something that can wreck your credit score. Experts also recommend that you contact the issuer of your credit and debit cards as soon as you believe that someone may have stolen your cards or your account information. The faster you call, the faster your financial institution can shut down your stolen card or account. If someone does steal your credit or debit cards remember that you are not required to pay for any unauthorized purchases that the thief makes. Consider it a form of protection that doesn’t come with cash. When someone steals your cash, you have no way to get that money back. When someone makes unauthorized purchases on your credit card, you can inform your card issuer. You’re then spared having to cover the costs of these illegal purchases. There’s no going back to a world without debit or credit cards. That doesn’t mean, though that you can’t take common-sense steps to protect yourself when using these spending tools.

Credit, Debit and Fraud Prevention

View Resource Credit, Debit and Fraud Prevention
You’ve packed your bags, reserved your hotel and secured tickets to the big festival. You’ve printed out your boarding pass. You’re ready for your big trip, right? Not quite. Traveling is fun. But it can also be dangerous: It’s easy to fall victim to identity theft while on the road. After all, you’ll be giving your credit card or debit card information to waiters, cashiers and check-in personnel that you don’t know. You’ll also be in strange surroundings, which may have the impact of clouding your judgment. Fortunately, there are several steps you can take to prevent identity theft from ruining your vacation. Before you leave Taking the proper steps to protect your identity starts before you even leave your home. Forbes recently ran a feature story detailing the tasks you should complete before hitting the road to protect your identity. It starts by canceling your mail delivery until you return. You don’t want potential identity thieves to notice that your mailbox at home is overflowing. They might take the opportunity to break into your home. Just as bad, these criminals might pluck credit-card offers from that stuffed mailbox, using them to take out accounts in your name. You should also make sure to leave your Social Security card at home, in a safe place such as a safety deposit box at your bank. You don’t want to lose your Social Security card while on the road. As Forbes writes, identity thieves would love to get possession of this card. They can do plenty of damages once it’s in their possession. Forbes also recommends that you prune your wallet before you leave. Remove any identification cards or credit cards that you won’t need. This way, if you lose your wallet on the road, thieves won’t have quite as much information to use against you. What to do if disaster strikes If the unthinkable should happen and your wallet is lost or stolen, don’t delay. Immediately call the issuers of your credit, debit, medical and drivers license cards, recommends Travel Agent Central. Your credit and debit card issuers can cancel those cards. The longer you wait, the more damage thieves can cause. Travel Agent Central also recommends that you file a police report with local law enforcement officials. The report filing can help establish your credibility should the thieves who stole your wallet make fraudulent purchases with your credit cards. The site says, too that you should immediately contact the three national credit bureaus — Experian, Equifax and TransUnion — to place fraud alerts on your credit report. These alerts might prevent identity thieves from opening new accounts in your name. Once you return home from your trip, it’s time to study your credit card and other financial account statements for unexplained purchases. Careful checking is the best way to determine if someone is using your information to make unauthorized purchases in your name. If you do suspect fraud, make sure to call the customer-service number on your account statement immediately. You should also order copies of your three credit reports — one each from Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. Check for any new credit accounts that an identity thief might have opened in your name without your permission. You are entitled to one free credit report each year from each of the three bureaus. You can order these three reports at www.annualcreditreport.com. If you do notice any suspicious activity on your report, be sure to contact the credit bureaus immediately. You don’t want a credit thief damaging your three-digit credit score. Traveling should be a fun experience. But identity theft can quickly ruin a dream vacation. Take these steps to make sure that your travel experiences are happy ones.

Protecting Your Identity While Travelling

View Resource Protecting Your Identity While Travelling
You might not realize just how much personal information you give out every day. Did you use your debit card to buy groceries this morning? Maybe you charged your lunch this afternoon. Maybe you reserved a hotel room online for a planned vacation. In each instance, you provided someone you probably don’t know with personal information. Identity theft is a serious problem in the United States. And it’s only gotten worse with the boom in online shopping. Consumers have gotten lazy when it comes to protecting their personal information. There are times when that laziness comes back to haunt them. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to protect your personal information. The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse says that protecting your personal information starts with ordering the three free credit reports that you are entitled to every year. You can obtain a copy of your credit reports — one each from the national credit bureaus TransUnion, Equifax and Experian — by visiting AnnualCreditReport.com. You are entitled to order your three credit reports once every year at no charge from this site. Once you get these reports, check them carefully. Make sure that no one has opened credit-card accounts or taken out loans in your name. Make sure that your reports don’t list any late payments on accounts that you don’t remember opening. Check your credit-card debt carefully on your report. You’ll want to know if someone has used your personal information to open up a new credit card account in your name. Thieves can gain access to your personal information by stealing all those unsolicited credit card or insurance offers that fill your mailbox each week. When you dispose of this junk mail, be sure to shred the papers before tossing them in the garbage or recycling. Identity thieves are not above digging through your garbage to unearth these offers, which they then use to apply for credit cards in your name. Of course, the best way to protect yourself from this scam is to keep the pre-approved unsolicited credit card offers from coming at all. You can do this by officially opting out from these offers. To do this, log on to www.optoutprescreen.com or call 888-567-8688. You can choose to opt out for five years with this method. If you’d like to opt out permanently from these offers, you can fill out and mail the permanent opt-out form located at www.optoutprescreen.com. Privacy and social media The rise of such social networks as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest has created new challenges when it comes to protecting your personal information. Part of the problem is that consumers tend to share too much information when posting on Facebook or sending out a Tweet. Information that they’d never share in person or even on the telephone they give little thought to including in social media post. Don’t cause yourself problems. As StaySafeOnline.org — a project of the National Cyber Security Alliance — says, once you post something online, it’s always posted, even if you erase it. Before posting on social networking sites, study the privacy and security settings that they offer. Many sites allow you to limit who sees your posts and profile information. There’s no shame in limiting the number of people who can access your social networking posts. In fact, doing so may keep cyber criminals away from your personal information. StaySafeOnline writes that the more personal information you provide online — including information that can help others decipher where you live and where you work — the more at risk you are at becoming a victim of identity theft. As the site says, the more you post about yourself, the easier you are making life for a hacker who’d love to gain access to your personal data. Dangerous smartphones Smartphones create security problems as well. As the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse says, today’s smartphones store a tremendous amount of personal information. What would happen if the wrong person stole or found your lost phone? A lost or stolen phone is why the clearinghouse recommends that you protect it with a password. A strong password — one that contains at least eight characters and includes a combination of numbers, letters and symbols — can keep a criminal from logging onto your phone and stealing the personal data on it. You should make sure, too, that your phone does not automatically remember log-in passwords for e-mail, social media or financial accounts. Protecting yourself from identity theft often requires little more than common sense. By being aware of your actions during a typical day, you can take steps to reduce your chances of becoming a victim.

Consumer Privacy

View Resource Consumer Privacy
Credit card companies are always looking for new customers, and one effective strategy for getting them is to offer interest-free deals. With the typical cost of borrowing on a credit card well above 10% APR, paying no interest sounds like an excellent deal. However, it is important to understand the offer fully before diving in. What are these credit cards offering? Credit cards are never interest-free forever, and that is the critical part to remember when considering getting a new card. What the credit card companies are offering is an initial promotion where you do not have to pay interest on some or all of your balance. The details depend on the particular offer, and there are several types you might find. Most credit cards offering the interest-free perk will waive interest charges so you do not have to pay them at all for a specified period. However, retail stores interest-free financing promotions are often credit cards with deferred interest. With these, you do not have to pay interest if you pay off the balance within the promotional period. During that promotional period, however, you are accruing interest charges and they will be applied if you do not pay the balance in full by the end of the promotional period. Often, those interest charges are at a much higher interest rate than offered by typical bank or credit union credit cards. What is the credit card company’s goal? The credit card company is looking for a long-term customer who will use the credit card on a regular basis. The interest-free offer helps the company motivate you to put the card in your wallet, and once it is there, they can make money when you use it. For example, every time you swipe your credit card, the issuer collects a fee from the retailer. In addition, the credit card company will begin to charge interest on any existing account balance after your promotional interest-free period has ended. What should you consider before you apply?

About Those Interest-Free Offers

View Resource About Those Interest-Free Offers
Getting out of debt may feel like a goal that is far out of reach, but that is why financial experts have created specific strategies that can help you make steady progress towards becoming debt-free. One of the most popular strategies is Dave Ramsey’s debt snowball method. In this, you make the minimum payment on each of your debts, and then make as big of an extra payment as you can on the debt with the smallest remaining balance. How the debt snowball method works As you use the debt snowball method, you will, hopefully, be able to pay off your smallest debt relatively quickly. At that point, you will be able to start snowballing your payments. All the money you had been using each month to pay off that first, small debt is now available for being used as an extra payment on your next smallest remaining debt. Each time you pay off a debt, you will have a bigger chunk of your monthly income that is available for using as an extra payment on your next smallest debt. Is the debt snowball method right for you?

Paying Off Debts with the Snowball Strategy

View Resource Paying Off Debts with the Snowball Strategy
One of the most rewarding things about being a homeowner is that you can make changes to your home that will make it a more enjoyable place to live. However, you probably won’t be living in your home forever, so it is also worth considering how your home improvement projects will affect your home’s value. The ROI or return on investment of a project tells you how much of the project cost returns to you in the form of a higher home value. The ROI is typically given as a percentage, based on research on home characteristics and sale prices. In most cases, the ROI is less than 100%, which means you spend more on the project than you recoup in the sale price. Therefore, most projects are best done if you still plan to live in the home several more years so you will be able to enjoy the home improvements that you make. As you consider making home improvements, keep in mind which projects tend to have the highest ROI and which ones will not do much to improve your home value. You do not necessarily need to choose only the projects with a high ROI, but you should at least keep values in mind so you do not face any surprises when you go to sell your home. Best renovation projects for improving home value Worst renovation projects for improving home value It is also worth mentioning that nearby home values affect the ROI on all of these projects. Your goal should be to have your home’s value about near the median in your neighborhood, rather than pricing yourself out with fancy renovations or skimping in an upscale neighborhood. Through all of this, though, remember that any improvement could be worth it to you if you find personal value and plan to keep the house for a long time.

The ROI of Home Improvement Projects

View Resource The ROI of Home Improvement Projects
When you purchase a home with the help of a lender, the lender will likely set up an escrow account for you as well. The lender collects the money from you on a monthly basis for property taxes and homeowner’s insurance, holds it in the escrow account, and then pays those bills on your behalf when they come due. For the lender, the main purpose of an escrow account is to protect their lienholder interest in your home. The borrower benefits by spreading out payments on a monthly basis for bills that are due semi-annually or annually. How does an escrow account work? When establishing an escrow account, your lender will calculate the total annual payments for your property taxes and homeowner’s insurance. The annual amount will then be divided by 12 to calculate your monthly escrow payment. This monthly amount is added to your principal and interest payment to make your total mortgage payment. You might hear your full monthly payment referred to by the acronym “PITI”, for Principal, Interest, Taxes & Insurance. Lenders also typically require you to maintain a cushion of two months of escrow payments in the account at all times. Every year, your lender will review your escrow account to ensure it has the right amount of funds. The lender will recalculate your payments based on the previous year’s property tax and insurance costs. If there were a shortage within your account, your lender would require you to make a one-time payment or have an increased mortgage payment the following year. If there was an overage in your account, your lender will give you a check for that amount and might decrease your escrow payment for next year. Advantages of escrow accounts Disadvantages of escrow accounts Avoiding an escrow account If you would prefer to not have an escrow account, you will need to negotiate it with your lender. The lender might be willing to allow you to manage your property taxes and homeowner’s insurance payments rather than using an escrow account. Typically, you’ll need to have put at least 20% down on your home, be a prior homeowner, or have a large cushion in your bank account. If you choose to forego the escrow account, you should budget carefully to ensure you have the money available to make your property tax and homeowner’s insurance payments when they are due.

How Escrow Accounts Work

View Resource How Escrow Accounts Work
Non-sufficient fund fees, more commonly known as NSF fees, are charged when your checking account does not have enough money for a purchase or payment you try to make. This purchase or payment could be with a debit card or a check, and rather than allowing the purchase to go through; the bank will reject it and charge you a fee. This is also known as a returned item fee. Overdraft fees are similar, but they occur when the bank allows a transaction to go through, despite your account balance not being sufficient to cover it. It is like an emergency short-term loan from the bank, and it comes at a cost. The bank will charge you the overdraft fee, plus you have to pay the deficit balance. Overdraft fees and the deficit balance are taken out of the first deposit you make after the overdraft occurs. Both types of fees can be costly, coming in as high as $35 each. These charges can add up, especially if you overdraft your account frequently. Also, consider that when your account has a low balance is probably the worst time for you to have to pay an unexpected fee. That is why it is so important to understand what you can do to avoid these situations. Best practices to avoid NSF and overdraft fees

Avoiding Non-Sufficient Fund and Overdraft Fees

View Resource Avoiding Non-Sufficient Fund and Overdraft Fees
Most people these days set up a wireless home network so that all of their devices can connect simultaneously. It is not unusual to have a desktop computer, a home gaming system, several televisions, laptops, tablets, and phones all connected to a single home network at the same time. While wireless networks are very convenient, they can also make you susceptible to malicious hackers trying to access your personal data. Why network security is essential An unsecured network can allow people you do not know to gain access to your network, view data coming in and out, or trick you into visiting malicious websites. Hackers may even be able to access information stored on your personal devices, leaving you vulnerable to identity theft. Plus, on a less critical note, neighbors could also join your network and soak up your bandwidth, slowing upload and download speeds for all of your devices. Checking if you are on a secure network From a user perspective, the main difference between a secure network and an unsecured network is that you need to enter a password to connect to the network. Your network device will indicate that a password is required by showing a symbol of a lock next to the network name in the list of available networks. It might even indicate the type of security when you hover over the network name with your cursor. Most public networks should not be considered secure if the password is available to anyone who asks for it. Your home network, though, and home networks of friends and family, can be secure if they include a password. Setting up secure networks Take the time now to make sure your home network is as secure as possible so that you can protect your household and any friends and family who use your network. The more security precautions you put in place, the more secure your network will be. Information on how to implement all of these security measures should be available in the documentation for your wireless network router.

Make Sure Your Home Network is Secure

View Resource Make Sure Your Home Network is Secure