Don’t leave outgoing mail in an unsecured box.
If you can, drop any outgoing mail at a USPS mailbox rather than leaving it in your mailbox at home or in an “outgoing” box at work. Creditor billing envelopes are pretty easy to spot, so it’s simple to just pick up your envelope, open it, and record all your personal information—including your checking account number.
Secure your social networking sites.
An industrious thief can learn a lot about you simply by reading your Facebook, LinkedIn, or other social networking profiles. One of my profiles contained a list of my favorite pets over the years; since “favorite pet” is a common security question, it wasn’t hard to play the guessing game and gain access to my cell phone account. Social networking sites make it easy to find information like your mother’s maiden name (it’s not so hard to track down anymore), birthdays, anniversaries, universities attended, etc. Change your profile settings so that only friends or those accepted into your network can view your information—be vigilant about accepting only people you really know and trust.
Make your passwords more secure.
Although this seems like common sense, when I took stock of all my passwords, I found that they were probably pretty simple to crack. Passwords should be a series of letters, numbers, and symbols, and the letters should be a mixture of upper and lower case. The longer the better—eight characters is the absolute minimum, but ideally, your password should be fourteen characters or longer. Check out the strength of your password with this password checker.
Shield your activity at ATMs or anywhere you enter a pin number.
I always take a quick look around before I enter my pin anywhere to see the people behind me and what they’re doing, but I’ve probably not given a second thought to the person standing behind me who seems to be idly texting on his or her phone. Thieves often pretend to be busy on their phone, but really they’re taking a picture of your card or taking video of you entering your pin, so shield the keypad no matter where you are; you don’t have to be at a shady ATM or sketchy liquor store to have your pin number stolen.
