There are too many people in the world who will try to do anything — legal or not — to take advantage of others. Especially with all the new technology emerging pretty much everyday, the dangers of financial exploitation are more severe than ever.
Even those who are actively trying to not be victims of fraud and other financial schemes are vulnerable if those committing the crimes are skilled enough.
It’s a scary world. There are a few important things that every adult should do to take care of your finances and avoid any financial exploitation:
Secure Payments
Making sure all your payments methods are secure and inaccessible to anyone else is essential for financial protection. Especially with the amount of transactions that occur online now — higher than ever before and rapidly increasing — secure payments are more important than ever.
Don’t Share Information
To go along with secure payments, it’s important to never share any important information with anyone. Not even friends and family if you’re going to share that information via the Internet. You never know who might be watching and ready to steal that info and use it against you. Keep any and all passwords secure in a file offline. Write them on post-it notes if you have to.
Also, never enter in info like your social security number, bank account numbers, or any other personal info into a sketchy website or email. There are so many scams out there waiting to take advantage of good people, be careful. Also, know that any respectable credit company or debt collection service would never ask for that information over the phone. If a caller is asking for that kind of info or any immediate payments, it’s most likely a scam and you should hang up the phone.
Keep Track of Everything
One of the worst things you can do is to not check your bank statements and account info regularly. If someone were to hack your accounts and began stealing from you, if you didn’t log in often enough to check it could go on for much longer than it should. That could be extremely detrimental to your financial security. Always make sure all your credit cards are where they should be, keep an eye out for any unusual activity on your transaction account, and regularly check your bank statements.
