Identity Management Day is an annual awareness event with the goal of promoting online safety practices and providing you with information about best practices and readily available technologies that can help you ensure your online identity is protected.
Everyone has a digital identity made up of large amounts of personal data that exists about you online.
Whether it comes from your social media profiles, search engine history or email accounts, your information is incredibly valuable to cybercriminals. If an account is compromised, your data may be stolen by cybercriminals, with the intention of stealing money, conducting phishing attacks against others, and even committing identity theft or credit fraud.
You can help protect your digital identity by following these best practices:
- Think before you click.
If you receive an email and you’re unsure who it’s from, or if the email looks “phishy,” do not respond and do not click on any links or open any attachments found in that email.
Why?
Attackers often send fraudulent email and text messages, referred to as phishing, in order to trick individuals into providing information such as usernames and passwords, or to download malware. - Use Two-Factor Verification (2FV).
2FV increases your security by enabling strong authentication tools, such as biometrics or a unique one-time code sent to your phone or mobile device.
Why?
At least 15 billion passwords are for sale on the Dark Web. A second method of authentication provides extra protection even if a username and password is compromised. - Download a password manager.
Use password managers to generate and remember different, complex passwords for each of your accounts.
Why?
Duplicating passwords or using common passwords is a gift to hackers. If one account is compromised, a hacker will typically try the same username and password combination on other websites.
These are just a few ways you can help protect your identity. You receive even greater protection through daily online identity monitoring and credit bureau monitoring. When your monitored information is found online in underground or black market sites, or we detect certain changes to your credit bureau file that could indicate fraud, we will send you alerts so you can take action as well as provide you with guidance on what to do to help protect yourself.
Take some time today to add to the information already being monitored in your online identity monitoring list – maximizing your protection to help guard against identity fraud.
