Assets are usually the first thing to go when a company or a family loses money during a crisis. It is one of the first concerns families have when it comes to protecting their loved ones from fraud.
Presently, three million families have reported that they have been affected by cybercrime. Millions of others continue to struggle with the financial impact of the situation.
The number keeps rising exponentially and accounts that could be potentially exploited through financial crime have shown an increase as well.
Apart from losing a sizable sum of money to fraudsters, financial crime has a psychological impact on individuals. It leads to an increase in addiction to the criminal activity, guilt, and depression. Family members may be desperate for money and you probably feel guilty when you even have to use social media apps to save money for your family instead of spending.
So, what can you do to safeguard your family’s identity, while minimizing the negative effects of fraud?
1. Know the importance of financial practices
One of the most important things that you can do is to know what questions can be asked by the fraudsters in order to compromise your account. Do not be hesitant to share certain personal information. However, do it only with the knowledge that you will receive at the end.
New services can introduce to the world new tricks in malware. So, be careful when giving out your personal information.
2. Close out of accounts, control your activity
When a family goes through a crisis, it is inevitable that they will try to seek money from wherever it can be. So, it is very important to carefully monitor and control the activity of all the accounts that you maintain.
In areas where funds can be accessed easily, consider closing accounts, or limit the settings so that your family can no longer access your money. Or perhaps, start a cash-only lifestyle to minimize the negative effects.
3. Use self-proofing, avoid cheap credit
With higher volumes of transactions on credit and debit cards, there is greater chance of your cards being lost, stolen, or altered. Since these fraudulent transactions tend to be larger, the cost of identity theft increases and therefore, more money must be spent to fight fraud. Therefore, setting a budget for your family can help to effectively cover theft.
If, through a process of self-scanning, identity thieves manage to access your personal information, they can enter the card into a new bank account. This process is called a skimming. As a result, you will face bigger charges for transactions that you expected to have occurred.
4. Online auto login
Many of you use online websites to log-in to your banking account. However, there are many websites that give you instructions on where you can log-in and there are also sites where you can sign-in by typing your name and password on a keyboard.
Unfortunately, there are bad actors who set up sites that are different from a real website with one click on a lock code. The third-party website sends a portion of your electronic password that the user registered as, to these bad actors.
This can easily allow your account to be hacked. Remember that there is a great risk involved, especially when using a third-party website to log-in to your banking website.
5. Convert credit card offers into gift cards
Credit card offers are always around, however, sometimes it is necessary to use the old tactic of eating into the credit limit of your credit card to be able to use the gift cards.
In that manner, your credit card can be used and spent not only by you but also other other good or bad clients or relatives.
Credit cards have their pros and cons. However, with the wealth of information on the Internet today, it is just too easy for a person to buy yourself into fraud.
So, as with any financial matters that you need to handle, spend some time to educate your family about financial protection and how to approach the specific difficulties that may be possible with it.
The post Protecting your family from cybercriminals appeared first on Veritasr.
