The Personal Finance Podcast - How to Protect Your Finances Online (And Prevent Getting Scammed!)

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Starting point is 00:00:56 Find your advisor at IG Private Wealth.com. On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to talk about how to protect your finances online and prevent getting scammed. What's up, everybody, and welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew, founder of MasterMoney.com. And today on the Personal Finance Podcast, we are going to be talking about how to protect your finances online and prevent getting scams. If you guys have any questions, hit me up on Instagram or tick

Starting point is 00:01:46 at Master Money Co and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whatever podcast player, you love listening to this podcast tune. If you want to help out the show, leave a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcast or Spotify. Thank you guys so much for leaving those five-star ratings and reviews. They are absolutely amazing. I read every single one of them, and I cannot thank you enough because it helps spread this message. And if you're not on there yet, make sure you jump on the Master Money newsletter because on

Starting point is 00:02:14 the Master Money newsletter, we are. sending out content every single week about current events and things going on and our thoughts about that. In addition, we're giving you a bunch of money tips, but we are also giving you early access to things like Index Fund Pro when it launches on January 2nd. In addition, we're going to give you discount codes to Index Fund Pro. And if you're on that newsletter, we're going to give you a pretty big discount to Index Fund Pro, so I'm really excited for you guys to be able to get that as well. So make sure you are on the newsletter. Make sure you're on the Master Money newsletter because we are giving you so much great content on that. We're really excited for you.

Starting point is 00:02:46 about. And we try to make it funny. We try to make it light harder. There's a bunch of memes. There's a bunch of other things in there as we write out that newsletter. It takes you less than five minutes every single week to read. That's how we wanted to set that up. So today, this episode is so incredibly important. It is so important for you to understand how to protect your finances online. Now, I'm talking through this from firsthand experience. I actually had my identity stolen at one point in time. and it was a nightmare to get through this whole process. So we're going to talk through exactly what you should be doing to prevent this from happening to you.

Starting point is 00:03:21 Because the number one reason why scammers out there try to get your information is for financial gains. So what are they looking for? They're looking for your financial accounts. They're looking for ways to get a hold of your money, your hard-earned dollars, and we're going to show you how to prevent that from happening. Putting together a bulletproof online financial protection program

Starting point is 00:03:42 is what this episode is going to be. This is going to be a comprehensive list. And then in another future episode, what we're going to talk about is that this has already happened to you? What should you actually be doing? And you really need to know both. Even if it hasn't happened to you before, you need to know what to do next

Starting point is 00:03:55 so that if it ever does happen to you, you have that information ready to go and you are ready to get after it. So this is an ongoing battle. Online scammers are getting better and better at what they do. There's a reason why cybersecurity jobs are in such high demand because there are scammers literally everywhere

Starting point is 00:04:11 trying to get a hold of your information, and they only have one goal, and that's for financial gain. Now, some obviously have other goals, but the main goal for 99% of scammers is they want that financial gain. So this is what we are working to prevent. You can see things like the FTX scandal

Starting point is 00:04:27 that just happened. There's a bunch of reasons why that happened and people didn't protect themselves financially. So you've got to make sure that you are ready for this and putting all the protections in place on your computers, on your devices, and protecting yourself

Starting point is 00:04:39 so people can't find you in your interests. information. So, if you want to know how to do this, let's get into it. All right. So the first thing you can do, and this is one of the most simple things that you can do right away. And I kind of want this episode to be a checklist. It's an audio checklist that you can get to go through and make sure that you have all this stuff in place, is you want to enable device encryption on all your devices. Now, what is device encryption? Device encryption is intended to protect your data if your device gets stolen. Now, is this something that could happen to absolutely anybody? Sure. somebody can break into your house, they can steal your devices.

Starting point is 00:05:14 You could be at a coffee shop and they steal your devices if you go to the restroom or something along those lines. But at the same time, you want to have this in place if somebody gets into your computer as well. So having device encryption in place, make sure that you have security intact inside of your device. Now, there's a bunch of advantages to device encryption. The obvious advantage is obviously if somebody steals your device, they can't access your personal files. They need the account password to be able to get in. But additionally, device encryption is also much more streamlined than other types of encryption. So there's two ways to do this.

Starting point is 00:05:47 I'm going to give you the actionable way so that you can get right to it and get the device encryption on your devices. If you're on a Mac device, they have something called File Vault that you can enable on your Mac. So you can go to your settings, search for File Vault, or you can look in the applications and search for File Vault, and it should come up. If it doesn't, go ahead and Google it, make sure that you can get it on your computer. The other device encryption is if you have a Windows computer, is you can look for something called Bit Locker, and that's Windows version of device encryption as well.

Starting point is 00:06:13 And they have some great guides on Microsoft.com on how to do this. And with those guides, I kind of talk through BitLocker and exactly how it works. So that's the first thing I would do is get that device encryption on devices. Now, the second question may come up is, should I get a VPN? And I do recommend a VPN. Now, if you don't know what a VPN is, it's another type of security tool, especially if you surf the web a lot. And a lot of people use it if they work in coffee shops a lot or if they're traveling internationally,

Starting point is 00:06:38 they use VPNs, but there are a lot of pros to VPNs as well. Because VPNs also help you with data protection from hackers, specifically when you're searching online. So there are a few reasons why you should get a VPN. There are some reasons maybe why you shouldn't get a VPN or shouldn't use it all the time, and we'll talk about that as well. But the three reasons why you should is for privacy from third parties. That's the first biggest reason there is that if you have a VPN turned on, you are

Starting point is 00:07:07 private and you are anonymous when you are surfing the web. The second thing is you have security at any location. So if you travel a lot for business or you travel a lot because you love to travel the world or you're just working in coffee shops all the time, I think security and protection in those locations is something that you definitely want to consider. Now some people may say, well, the odds are really low. So why would you really have it on there? The odds are low, but who cares? because if there's somebody in there who knows how to get into your devices, then it's something that you definitely could worry about. Now, I wouldn't worry about everybody getting into your device.

Starting point is 00:07:39 That's a very hard thing to do, but there are people who know how to do it. So making sure that you have it on when you are accessing Wi-Fi at a specific location is something you definitely want to do. And then safe access to public Wi-Fi is the third reason. So if there's public Wi-Fi in your area, say, for example, I know like Denver, for example, has this, where they have Wi-Fi for the entire city. If public Wi-Fi is available, I would definitely utilize a VPN for that reason, because a lot of people have access to that Wi-Fi, and you need to make sure that you are protected

Starting point is 00:08:05 when you're utilizing the internet because you're using a lot of different transactions online, most of us shop online, and so your transactions are running via the internet and people can get in there pretty quickly if they know what they're doing. Now, downside's the BVNs, is that if you always have them on,

Starting point is 00:08:19 it can slow down your computer. This is why I don't love using them when I'm at home, so I don't use them at home for the most part, especially if I'm trying to do things quickly. Now, if I'm on my computer just writing, then that's one thing. And another thing you could do is you could toggle it on and off when you are shopping online. So if you're shopping online or you're looking at your bank statements, maybe you'll toggle it on.

Starting point is 00:08:38 And if you're just surfing the internet, looking at funny videos or something like that, then maybe you toggle it off because you need that speed to view those videos. So there's a couple of things that you can do there, but it does slow down your browsing. So make sure you understand that and look for some out there. There's a couple of VPNs that are out there like NordVPN is one of them that you can check out and see if that works for you. and it's really an inexpensive way to protect yourself because it's a great way to protect yourself when you're searching the internet. Now let's get in the next segment

Starting point is 00:09:06 and talk about passwords. So most of you understand that people who are trying to scam you are also trying to figure out what your password is and a lot of people use very similar passwords on a bunch of different websites. My friends, this is a problem. So what you want to do is figure out a way

Starting point is 00:09:24 to protect your password. So if you're still using your street name or your pet's name, or if you're still using your mother's maiden name as a password, any of these various things can be found very easily. And in fact, later on in the show, I'm going to show you how to get rid of all this stuff on the internet so that you don't have people searching your name and finding all of this information on you. But if you're using very simple things, you need to change your strategy. You need to change the way that you protect your password.

Starting point is 00:09:50 So the first way you can protect your passwords is you can have a different password for every single website and you can save it in one location. Now there are cloud-based locations, and there are locations that are encrypted onto your hard drive. I use the cloud-based locations because I just think it's easier to access any device. I have so many different devices

Starting point is 00:10:08 that I need to utilize, either from the home office, the office that I go into work in every single day, my laptop, my main Mac desktop, I have my iPad. There's so many different areas that I need to access with my devices that I just use the cloud-based devices.

Starting point is 00:10:22 If you are weary about cloud-based devices, I completely get it. I completely understand you want it on one single hard drive. Do it. Do whatever works for you. And it's more secure, obviously, to have it on one single hard drive and to have it on a cloud-based hard drive

Starting point is 00:10:35 where people can hack into that cloud-based hard drive. But at the same time, that's what I use because all you need to do is make the password to your cloud-based password manager really difficult to figure out. Now, I personally use LastPass. LastPass is what I use. We use it in our business.

Starting point is 00:10:49 We use it within my personal stuff as well. And LastPass helps you store all your information for your passwords for specific websites. Now, you want to make these passwords extremely unique for each website. You don't want it to be exactly the same on every single website because it's going to be very easy to break into everything if you have the same password. Specifically, say for example, you use Dropbox or you use Google Drive to store all your files. You use Gmail for all your files as well.

Starting point is 00:11:15 If they figure out that one password, how to get it to Gmail or Google Drive, you have a lot of information all of a sudden exposed. So you want to make sure that these passwords are very very, unique for each website. And so that's very difficult to remember. So you need these password managers in place to do that. So I love the cloud-based password managers. There's also one called one pass as well. There's a bunch of them out there. I use last pass. I think it's fantastic. And a lot of them use the same thing. So you pay a monthly rate on those. And a lot of times they have discounts for new folks as well. Now, the second thing to talk about beyond passwords is

Starting point is 00:11:48 your email when you log into stuff. So when it comes to logging into accounts, a lot of times what you want to do is you want to Google yourself and see what email pops up when you Google yourself. Now like I said, later on, we're going to talk about how to get your information off the internet, and it's amazing how this can be done, how you can get your information off of the internet. But when you Google yourself, what email comes up? It's probably your standard email that you use for everything. So here's what I recommend. I recommend making either an additional Gmail account or some secret email address that is not very easy to figure out what it is and using that email address as your login for other things. Now, you don't need a bunch of

Starting point is 00:12:23 email addresses, but don't use the one that you use for everything. Make it some combination of letters and numbers at some weird encrypted email address that you can use for all these online things. Why? Because it's going to be much more difficult to find that email address and figure out who that goes to than it would be if it's your last name. Firstname.1stain at Gmail.com or your first name. dot last name at Gmail.com or whatever your Gmail address is, the one that you've been

Starting point is 00:12:46 using this for the last 20 years, it's probably very easy to figure out what that is just with simple Google searches. So making sure that you have a more encrypted email address is another great thing that you can do. Now, usernames. If you're using usernames to log into specific websites, some let you use your email, some let you use usernames. Don't make your username your name. Make your username something that is not easily guessed, something that is very difficult to use.

Starting point is 00:13:10 I would make it something different for each website and just store it in last pass or one pass or whatever password manager you use. Because that is the amazing thing about having those password managers is you can change to every username and you can change every username. and you can change every password. So nothing is the same. So if somebody breaks into one, they can't get into the rest.

Starting point is 00:13:26 Then there's security questions. So security questions are a big thing that people don't think through this a little bit. So for example, for your security questions, you can put in what is my mother's maiden name? But you don't have to put in

Starting point is 00:13:37 her actual real maiden name. You can put in whatever answer you want in there because somebody could Google your mother's name and figure out what her maiden name is. If your mother's maiden name is Johnson, you could put in your mother's maiden name

Starting point is 00:13:49 Ms. Smith, for example, you don't have to add in the actual answer. And so that is the key to these security questions is change the answers, change what they actually are so people can't figure out what it actually is. And the next thing is authentication. So authentication has become much, much more prevalent as of late. You can see two-factor authentication coming into play. And what a lot of people like to do is SMS authentication. And the problem with SMS authentication is it can be retrieved a lot of times and scammers can get access to whatever that authentication is if they have access to your phone number. So there's two things to do here. If you're going to do SMS authentication because it's easier, I understand it's easier. I know it's way easier than using an authenticator, which we'll

Starting point is 00:14:27 talk about in a second. But if you're using that SMS authentication, maybe go get a Google voice line and they're absolutely free. So you go to Google Voice and get a phone number that's absolutely free. You can utilize that phone number on your phone. So if you've had one for a long time with Google Voice, maybe get one changed and switch that up. But use that Google voice line, make sure you have that into play so that people can't figure out what your phone number is because when you Google yourself, you're going to see your phone number is going to pop up a lot of places as well with a lot of these data brokers. So making sure you have that in play is also extremely important. Now, authentication. There are a lot of authenticator apps out there now that

Starting point is 00:15:03 will help you with authentication. Now it's becoming much more convenient. They all have apps so you can do it really quickly. There's a bunch of different ones out there like Offi is one of them. Microsoft has their own as well. I've used them. Microsoft one a number of times it's a great one. But there's a bunch of different authenticators out there. Using those, I think, is the most protected way to do this. So really, even though SMS is easier, I would use an authenticator because an authenticator is going to help you protect your information even more. We just want to take that simple extra step to help protect our information because the last thing you want to do is deal with the

Starting point is 00:15:37 headache of getting your identity stolen or getting your financial information stolen because that's going to take you way more time than just utilizing an authenticator. Now, what I want to get into is how you can remove your data off the internet. And this is the most important part. You guys need to listen to this part. How to remove your data off the internet so they can't find your information. So let's get into that next. I remember when I needed to hire someone fast, but finding the right person quickly felt impossible. And if you've ever been there, you know how stressful this can be. That's where Indeed comes in. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Instead of struggling to get your job post noticed, Indeed's sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire faster.

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Starting point is 00:18:52 All right. So this is one of the most important things that you can do is you want to be able to remove your personal data from data brokers who have your information online. And if you don't know what a data broker is, it's these companies that all they do is they collect your data and they sell them to other companies. And you would be amazed at how many of these there are out there. In fact, when I looked it up, I was all over the place of my information. was all over the place. The way you can look this up is a number of different ways. You can put your email address in quotations and see what pops up. You can put your phone number in quotations and see what pops up. You can put your name and some other information, maybe your address in quotations. See what pops up. What you're going to find is you are all over the place. And so the way to remove yourself is you're going to have to go to these data brokers and you're going to have to ask them to remove you. And there's a bunch of different laborist activities that they have you do. Sometimes you have to upload your driver's license to prove it was you.

Starting point is 00:19:42 Sometimes you have to send them a physical written letter. Sometimes you just enter your email address, they remove it. Sometimes you just give them your information, they remove it. This was one of the most laborious chores of all. But I found a solution because I was talking to my buddy Chris Hutchins at a conference, who was the host of the All the Hacks podcast, and he was telling me about a service called Delete Me. And what Delete Me does, it does all of this for you.

Starting point is 00:20:06 It literally gets rid of all your information from data brokers for you. So he's telling me about this. And in the back of my head, I'm thinking, well, this has to be an expensive white glove service to have all this information removed because this would take me hundreds of hours to get it off all of these data brokers. So I went home, looked up, delete me, and I was in shock of what the price was to get your information removed from all these data brokers. For a little bit over $100, delete me will literally remove you from all these data brokers.

Starting point is 00:20:33 So I tried out the service and they removed me from over a thousand different websites. Now, that would have taken me over 100 hours. easily taking me over 100 hours. And if you look on Delete Me's website, they actually claim that they save the average customer 60 to 80 hours per year just by doing this. For a little over $100, that is a huge bang for your buck. So then I did it from my wife's information.

Starting point is 00:20:57 They removed her name from 606 different websites as well. I cannot tell you how much I love this service and how much of a time saver it is. So after I used a service, I loved it so much. I reached out to delete me. I said, hey, we're doing an episode on how to protect. check yourself online. We're doing a couple of them actually.

Starting point is 00:21:14 Can you give my listeners a discount if they use your service? So Delete Me is actually going to give you guys a 20% discount just for listening to this episode. So we partnered with Delete Me for these two episodes so that they could give you those discounts. So really excited to give you that as well because this is such a major time saver. You fill out a little bit of information all about you and you can fill out as much as you possibly can. It took me like 15 minutes. Fill out all the information and Delete Me just removed it from all the time. these sites within a few days. And the cool thing about Delete Me and the thing that I love about

Starting point is 00:21:46 delete me is every quarter, they will go back and continuously remove your information. It's not like a one-time service where they do it once and then they're gone. They will continue to look for your information and take it off the web. So it's like a set it and forget it system. And it is one of the best things out there. It's one of the best services out there, especially if you want to protect your financial information online. Why? Because all hackers have to do and all scammers have to do is look up information and boom, they have it right there. It's easily accessible. But if you get that information off of the internet, it is much more difficult to figure out who you are, what your information is, and hack into different websites. This is one of the most amazing things that you can do

Starting point is 00:22:26 for a very low cost. So I definitely recommend them. We're going to link, delete me up down in these show notes as well. But in addition, if you use that promo code PFP, that is going to help you get that 20% off and it's an amazing service. I cannot recommend them enough. So this is how you can get your information offline so that scammers cannot get your information, get a hold of that information, and try to scam you that way. Now, let's get into how you can protect your credit and your other financial accounts. Now, the other thing you want to do is you want to be monitoring your credit because if someone steals your information, like what happened to me, for example, when they stole my information, they started to sign up for student loans, then they'd pull that cash

Starting point is 00:23:06 and keep the cash and they tried to sign up for them in my name. So what you want to do is make sure that monitoring your credit. So you can monitor your credit in a bunch of different ways. There's a website called free annual credit report.com. That will help you get email alerts to monitor your credit. You can use Experian. They have credit monitoring stuff. You can use credit karma. Chase has a way to monitor your credit. Capital One has a way to monitor your credit. So you can look at your credit card companies as well. But you want to get these credit alerts sent directly to your email because what you want to do is make sure if somebody's trying to open something in your name, you want to know immediately.

Starting point is 00:23:41 And what these will do is say, hey, did you just apply for a home loan, for example? And if you're applying for a home loan, you just say yes so that they know that this is a valid inquiry. Now, one thing to note about this is there are also ways that you can pay for credit monitoring. I think if you have had your identity stolen, you should pay for credit monitoring. So I pay for credit monitoring because I've had my identity stolen before. So your information's out there. So you really need to double up your protection. If you haven't had your information stolen, I think these e-mails,

Starting point is 00:24:10 alerts are fine, that you don't have to pay for credit monitoring as well, I do only for that reason. The second reason why it would make sense to pay for credit monitoring is if you don't want to freeze your credit report. We're going to talk about that in a second here. It is the most valuable thing that you can do to protect yourself online with credit is you can freeze your credit report so that people cannot go out there and just apply for loans in your name. And we'll talk about how to do that in a second. And then number three is if you know that you're not going to monitor your credit. If you know that you just really don't care, you're not even going to look at the email, when they come in, then you need to make sure that you pay for this instead so somebody else is doing it for you.

Starting point is 00:24:44 So you can pay for it for a yearly fee. I just pay the yearly fee every year. I think I pay $200 a year. Then you have your credit monitoring on as well. Now one thing you want to do is if you're going to pay for it, you want to make sure that you are paying for a service that actually monitors all the credit bureaus. So sometimes they'll just say, oh, we monitor Experian or we monitor Equifax. If they only monitor one credit bureau, then you're only getting one third of the protection. You want to make sure that they are monitoring all the credit bureaus so that your information is protected as well. Now, the number one thing that you can do is freeze your credit. So how do you freeze your credit? Freezing your credit means that what you're doing is you are freezing any credit inquiries in your name

Starting point is 00:25:29 so that nobody can sign up for a loan if your credit is frozen. Now, it is easy to freeze your credit and it is easy to unfreeze your credit. We'll walk through the steps here in a second. but this allows you to protect your credit in any instance whatsoever. So if somebody wants to sign up for a credit card in your name, they cannot do it because your credit is frozen.

Starting point is 00:25:45 And once you want to sign up for a credit card, you unfreeze your credit, sign up for the credit card. Once the credit card is in your name, then you freeze your credit again so that nobody can sign up for anything within your name. This is what I do, and I think it is one of the most underrated things that people aren't doing right now.

Starting point is 00:26:02 So how do you freeze your credit? First thing you do is you want to contact all three of the members. major credit bureaus. So there's Equifax, there's Experian, and there's TransUnion. Those are the three major ones that you can call. Now, there are other ones as well. We'll link them up down below, but those are the three main ones. They have phone numbers that you can call, or you can just go online and fill out some information that they have as well. There's step-by-step guides online that you can utilize. We'll link them up down below so that you can do that. Now, the documents you're

Starting point is 00:26:29 going to need when you go to freeze your credit is typically your social security number, your date of birth, and your address. Now, depending on when you, initiate the credit freeze and where you do it if it's online or by mail or on the phone, you may need some other information as well. You might need like your passport or some of documentation like that. You may need some tax documents and proof of address or utility bill. So the easiest way I like to do is just online because you can get all that information provided to them whatever they need very quickly. Usually you have it saved in your documents and you can just get it to them very quickly. Because if you do it by phone, they're going to have

Starting point is 00:27:01 additional authentication questions and all this other stuff. Then let's say you, you freeze your credit. You call all three credit bureaus or you get that done. Then to unfreeze your credit, all you have to do is just go to the website and you're going to have a login and all that kind of stuff and then you just click unfreeze. You can unfreeze it for a short period of time. Make sure those passwords are extremely protected, save them up in last pass or whatever password manager you use. And then you can just click a button unfreeze your credit. The easiest way is online. So if you're going to do it through the mail or on the phone, just know you're going to have to jump through more hoops. Online is the easiest way to do this. And that's going to allow you to be able to free

Starting point is 00:27:36 and unfreeze your credit pretty quickly. So if you want to sign up for a mortgage, you just unfreeze your credit, sign up for the mortgage. Once that process is done, freeze it back up again. If you want to sign up for a credit card, unfreeze your credit, sign up for the credit card, freeze it back up again. And I'm a person who signs up for multiple credit cards, as you know from the travel hacking episode. And I still do this all the time because it is much safer. And it's probably the safest thing that you can do outside of removing as much of your information as possible when you are doing this online. So making sure you freeze your credit is something you definitely want to be doing

Starting point is 00:28:06 especially if you're interested in protecting your online information. Now, when we have the future episode, we're going to talk about what you should be doing if your identity gets stolen or your credit card gets stolen or any of these different things. We're going to be talking about exactly what you should do there as well. So make sure you are subscribed to this podcast because that is really important information that you can also,

Starting point is 00:28:25 even if you haven't had your information stolen, there's going to be a lot of information there that you can use right now and additional protection things that you can put into place. So thank you guys so much for listening to this, episode of the personal finance podcast, I truly appreciate each and every single one of you. I hope you learned a ton about how to protect your finances online. If you guys have any questions, make sure you hit us up on Instagram or TikTok. And don't forget to leave that five star rating

Starting point is 00:28:48 and review. This episode took a lot of preparation, a lot of personal pain from getting my identity stolen and figuring out all this information as well. So making sure that you leave that five star rating and review is one of the best things that you can do to help support the show. Make sure you're ready for Index Fund Pro coming out on January 2nd. We are so excited to release that, and if you want to get that discount, make sure you're on the Master Money newsletter. And we will see you guys on the next episode. Rosen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes.

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The Personal Finance Podcast - How to Protect Your Finances Online (And Prevent Getting Scammed!)

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