Jill Russo Foster

Tips for Successful Personal Finances

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Take Time To Protect Your Identify Now

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Well it happened again – this time EquiFax! This is not the first time nor will it be the last security breach.

Here are some suggestions that you may want to take to help to protect your identity:

•    Personally, I am not a fan of doing banking on my phone, so I don’t have these apps. But I do have many texts (one for each transaction) and this way, I can catch anything immediately. I will be adding my credit cards to this process.

•    In addition, I use two-step authentication for all my accounts. Having a code either texted or phoned to me to use to access my account.

•    Check your credit report. I am a firm believer of this and now even more so. If you need reminders to check your credit for free three times per year, sign up for my newsletter here and you will get email reminders to check your credit every four months.

•    Monitor your accounts. I typically check in a couple of times a month, both my bank and credit card accounts just to look for anything that I don’t recognize. If you don’t want to do this, make sure you reconcile your accounts monthly.

•    You may want to set up credit monitoring service and/or freeze your credit report. You can check out my article on Credit Freeze here.

•    Change your passwords regularly.They shouldn’t be easy to guess (use a combination of upper and lower case letters, number and symbols) and don’t you use the same password. Each account should have its’ own individual one.

Take the time now to protect your identity. It’s much easier to do this proactively than to deal with the turmoil of identity theft later.

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Identity Thieves Don’t Stop with the Living

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You know that I go to great lengths to protect myself from identity theft.  I do what I can from my end even though I have no control over corporate breaches.  Ugh!

But, there are others in my family who may be at risk.

Have you ever had a close family member pass away?  You probably said ‘yes’ to that question.  If so, you know that the family writes an obituary for the newspaper that includes a number personal details.  When I was the Executor for my father’s estate, I did that.  I even looked at the newspaper to see what information other families included to make sure I didn’t leave anything of importance out.

Well, that was mistake number #1.

I (like many others) handed a potential identity thief the information on a silver platter. I included his date of birth, where he grew up, the names of my mother and siblings, his past places of employment, and the organizations he was a part of.  I included everything everything but his social security number.

According to AARP, 2.5 million deceased people have their identity stolen postmortem each year.  This is wide spread and the victims can’t speak up, so it’s a win for the thief.

So what can you do about it?

  • Send death certificates to the three credit reporting agencies and request that a death alert be posted to the deceased credit report – I did this.
  • Contact the banks and investment companies with death certificates. See if you can get the accounts out of the deceased’s name.  In some states you can do this if the account was joint – I took care of this, too.
  • Notify the Social Security Administration, the IRS and Motor Vehicles – this is where I could have done more (partial mistake #2 – I did social security and the IRS but not motor vehicle).

Then, preventatively, check the deceased’s credit reports to monitor for any suspicious activity so you can catch it early on.  For more options, please go to my previous newsletter on reports available to consumers.

Hopefully, I won’t lose anyone close to me anytime soon, but from now on I will do ALL the steps – not just most.  I was somewhat lucky, as my father was collecting social security and had a government pension, so I notified both. It didn’t even occur to me to notify the DMV.  Learn from what I have done (and not done) to protect your loved ones.

How to use a unique password for every account without going crazy

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You know you should have completely unique passwords for every online account, and you’re not supposed to write them down anywhere. But that’s not enough. They also have to be hard to remember.

If you’re like me, that’s just not possible because you use a lot of online services. The internet has made my life easier in so many ways, but it comes with its own risks.

So, how do you keep your online accounts safe? Many people are turning to Password Managers.

A password manager is software that stores and organizes your passwords in an encrypted state, which makes them hard to hack.

The most popular versions will fill login forms automatically. Once you’ve downloaded the software and stored your passwords, they’re fairly easy to use.

Are they safe? The experts are mixed on this point. Some feel that it’s never safe to store your passwords. Others are comfortable with the encryption used on the best versions.

My assistant swears by LastPass. It’s free for your PC, but for $12 a year, you can use it on your smartphone.

If you want to use a password manager, you can choose between a web-based or a local service. LastPass is web-based as is Dashlane and Roboform. The information is stored in the cloud so you can easily use it on all your computers and devices. Keepass and SplashID are local, meaning they’re stored on your PC.

To do your own research, check out the links below.

How do you manage your passwords? Let me know in the comments.

Links for Research

PCMag
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,…

LifeHacker
http://lifehacker.com/5529133/five-be…

Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/S…

Wikipedia Definition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password…

 

Stop the Unwanted Calls

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Are you as annoyed by unwanted sales calls as I am? The phone rings right when I want to relax, enjoy dinner, or watch my favorite show.  The phone rings again when I’m in the middle of folding clothes, vacuuming or have my hands in soapy dishwater. I answer, expecting family or friends, and hear a recorded voice – so irritating.

It’s not just my land line. It’s happening on my cell phone, too.

dog-phoneWe’ve been on the Do Not Call list for years. Once you’re on the list for 31 days, you’re supposed to receive fewer calls, but too many telemarketing firms ignore the rules. I report those rule breakers to donotcall.gov. It’s a small act of revenge, but it makes me feel better.

I also use my telephone provider’s block list, which works great as long as I have the number of the company that called me. But, I may not have the correct number thanks to spoofing.

In fact, a telemarketer was spoofing my own 800 number! I know this because someone in California contacted me and requested to be taken off my call list. But, I don’t have a call list. I have as much business as I can handle right here in Connecticut.

To be honest, I’m not sure if they believed me. I might not have believed them if the situation were reversed. It’s not easy finding the source of unwanted calls, so I feel for them. I have tried to find the real company behind some of the most irritating robocalls (Heather at Card Services, anyone?), and got nowhere.

About those robocalls…

I just found about, and registered at NoMoRobo.com thanks to my friends at LeBlanc Communications. It’s a free service, and your phone provider must participate.  We just signed up, but it seems to be working. I’ll let you know how it goes.

How do you manage unwanted calls?

New rules for stopping robocalls

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When you get a robocall, should you…

  1. hang up right away
  2. follow the instructions for removing yourself from their call list
  3. try to get through to a real person, then shame them for calling when you’re on the “Do Not Call List”

Although “C” was tempting, I used to do “B” thinking that it was the most logical way to get the calls to stop. But the calls actually increased! How could that be?

It’s because some of these calls are from fraudulent companies who have no interest in following FTC regulations.

Like many of you, we’re on the Do Not Call Registry. (If you’re not, do this today at DoNotCall.gov.)  It stops most unsolicited calls. The calls we do receive are from scammers like “Rachel from cardholder services” and the new “Life Alert” phishing scam.

While it does help to report these calls to DoNotCall.gov, you should know that some originate from outside the US, which makes it difficult for the FTC to prosecute them. It doesn’t help to try to remove your number from their call lists, because they don’t actually have a list. They’re just dialing random numbers hoping to get a live line. In fact, any interaction on your part could actually put you on a call list!

If you want to keep track of calls that violate FTC regulations, you can put in a formal complaint on the Do Not Call website or by calling 888-382-1222. We’ve started to do this. In fact, I did this yesterday as I received a robocall on my cell phone – which is against FTC regulations in every state no matter the circumstances.

Calls you shouldn’t report to DoNotCall.gov

  • Political  campaigns
  • Charities
  • Companies that you do business with

Unless they’ve called your cell phone, it’s perfectly legal for companies to call you for these purposes. If you report them, you’re just wasting the FTC’s time, which is unfortunate around election time and the holidays.

While doing the research for this post, I came across some interesting tips for stopping the calls.  Some people are suggesting starting your voicemail message with the three tones you hear when you call a disconnected number. Do you think the robocallers have programmed their systems to ignore disconnected phone numbers? I’m not so sure, but it’s a fun idea.

Let me know what you are doing to eliminate unwanted phone calls from your life.