Category: How To

December 29, 2016

How to Freeze Your Credit

This is not about stopping paying interest or anything similar. It’s about protecting yourself against scammers opening new lines of credit in your name.

It may be a somewhat extreme approach, but for some afflicted by scammers – choosing to freeze their credit accounts and blocking the ability to take out more credit can be a sensible if temporary move.

How to Freeze Your Credit Cards

You have to contact each of your credit card providers and either cancel the card or request that they block the card for a period. Asking to freeze your card (while still paying any interest due) is a rare request and they may not want to co-operate. However if necessary you can always cancel the card and open a new account after you no longer feel the need to block access.

How to Stop Scammers Taking Out New Lines of Credit

You have to contact each of the three primary credit bureaus and request a block on new credit. They will give you a 10 digit pin number without which no-one can take out new credit cards etc in your name even if they have all the necessary other information about you.

Equifax: www.equifax.co.uk or call 0845-603-3000.

Call Credit : www.calcredit.co.uk or call 0330-024-7574

Experian: www.experian.co.uk or call 0344-481-0800

Credit freezes can be a hassle if you need to unfreeze your reports because you’re applying for a loan for example, it can take several days to unfreeze it and allow access.

A credit freeze won’t help prevent fraud on existing accounts, which constitutes 88 percent of identity theft.

Regular Reports

It makes sense to regularly check your credit reports. You get one free credit report per year from each of the three major credit bureaus.

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December 21, 2016

How to Stay Safe on Social Media

Social Media is incredibly popular and many of us are used to just posting or tweeting anything we like. That’s what social media is for.

BUT, there are unscrupulous people who take advantage of that openness. Scammers.

You should take general precautions – i.e. have appropriate anti-virus and anti-malware on your computer and keep it up to date.

Then it’s a question of taking care that anything you put on social media cannot be used to harm yourself or anyone else. Following these points below can help:-

Check the privacy and security setting son your social media and set them appropriately.
Set strong passwords (at least 8 characters long and including capitals, numbers and symbols)
Be careful with links and files. If you’re not sure about the source, then don’t download or click on the link. Hackers will sometimes post links in comments to try and trick you into clicking them.
Be aware that your posts may affect others and they may take offence where you wouldn’t or not want their private information online. So be considerate.
Be wary of add-ons. Many games and add-ons are created by third party companies and may not be as safe as you assume. Be wary of any extra permissions that an APP requires.
Be careful who you follow or friend. You may want to have hundreds of friends, but does it really help anything?
Periodically, try a Google search on your name – to see what personal information is available
Never log in from public hotspots. Most social networking sites don’t have a secure login (https), so your user name and password could be copied at any time. Only log in from trusted wireless networks.

Remember: If you wouldn’t say it or do it in public, don’t post it online.
Think twice before posting pictures you wouldn’t want your parents, partner or employer to see.

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October 5, 2016

Safe Online Banking

Online banking is becoming very popular as people have less time to visit their banks to carry out transactions and we’re becoming very used to doing more and more business on our mobile devices (and PCs).

Logging in on a Desktop or Laptop Computer

You should always access the bank website from your browser favourites or type in the Internet address – never respond to emails claiming to be from your bank asking you to click to login or to provide them with security information. These are always scams as your bank will never ask for such information in an email.

You need to have anti-virus installed on your computer and to keep it up to date. This will prevent the worst viruses getting into your computer but no software is infallible and you need to exercise caution as well – e.g. do not open attachments in email unless you know the person who sent it to you. Two popular packages are from McAfee and Norton. There is also anti malware software available that can protect against a wider range of threats to your security.

The login pages of bank websites use secure access (https) so a locked padlock or key symbol should appear in your browser window when accessing your bank site.

Using a Mobile Device

You can use the browser on your mobile device to access your bank’s website but it’s better to download and use the bank’s APP (make sure you download the official one). Keep the APP and the device up to date with all security updates.

Wi-Fi

You should ensure that your Wi-Fi at home uses a password rather than allowing open access.

There are numerous places such as restaurants, shopping centres, trains and buses that offer free Wi-Fi. Again you should only use this if it requires a password to login and you should avoid any financial transactions on public Wi-Fi

Scammers have been known to setup free Wi-Fi in town centres and use it to collect passwords and personal; information from users.

Banks

The banks use various methods to ensure the safety of your information and you should use these wherever possible.

Barclays has PINsentry which is a device that generates unique 8 digit code you use whenever you want to access your account. This is much stronger security than just a password. Natwest recommends use of IBM Raport security software for better protection against online intrusion. Lloyds use an anti-fraud process called Enhanced Internet Authentication (EIA) to help keep you safer online. Santander recommend downloading Trusteer Rapport which is free and has won awards for keeping customers’ details secure.

Check your bank statements regularly and contact your bank immediately if you spot any transactions that you didn’t authorise.

All of the banks put a lot of effort into trying to keep you safe with their online baking so follow their guidance.

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September 21, 2016

How to Keep Your Passwords Safe

The first point to remember is that a password is only safe if you don’t tell anyone and don’t give it away online.

The second point is that you need more than one password. We all have lots of things we login to that need a password. You should not use the same password for each.

Follow these guidelines

Use safe passwords (this means a password that would be extremely difficult for anyone to guess or for a computer to crack quickly). This needs to be at least 8 characters long. Each character you add makes it more difficult for someone to work out.

Don’t use actual words unless you add three or more together in a nonsensical way . Avoid birthdays, anniversaries, pet names, TV characters etc.

As well as normal letters, you can use upper case letters, numbers and even punctuation marks and symbols in your password.

Don’t use sequences of consecutive numbers or letters e.g. 34567 or QWERTY.

Use a different password for each site. Once they’ve got your password, scammers will try it on any number of other sites. If the scammers get one of your passwords then that’s all rather than giving them open access to all of your accounts using that same password.

Make your passwords easy to remember — but only for you.

How can you do that?

One approach is to change some of the password letters into symbols or numbers.

Another approach is to use a sentence and then take just the first or last letter of each word and you should end up with a long unintelligible string of letters but you can remember it through the original sentence.

E.g. I take my dog Ferdinand to the park every day for a walk becomes itmdFttpedfaw

Try not to write your passwords down or store them on your computer. If you do need to write something down then give yourself a clue rather than the actual password.

Keep safe.

August 19, 2016

Google Safe Search

Google Safe Search is a feature in the Google Chrome browser designed to keep adult Internet content out of search results for children. It also provides some protection against malicious websites. Google maintain a list of websites that have been hacked and hence are dangerous to visit and warns you if you try to go to one.

To activate Safe Search:-

First of all, login to Google if you have a Gmail or other Google account.
Go to page https://www.google.com/preferences
Tick the box to turn on Safesearch
If you want to lock the PC so no-one else can change those settings or bypass Safesearch then click on Lock SafeSearch

If you have more than one browser available on the computer then you’ll need to repeat this process for each browser.

Then you’re protected by Google Safesearch.

July 22, 2016

Royal Mail Opt Out of Junk Mail Deliveries

Royal Mail deliver letters and parcels to your door every day, but they also drop lots of leaflets and other unaddressed mail through your letterbox.

They have an opt-out service you can sign up to stop them leaving you this stuff, but you don’t see this service advertised ever. They make too much money from leafleting for them to advertise how to stop it.

Royal Mail say their Door-to-Door Opt-Out is a free service that will stop unsolicited, unaddressed mail delivered by the postman. Signing up to the scheme is the single most effective measure you can take to reduce junk mail.

Now Royal Mail has never done much to promote its opt-out scheme for leaflets and as a result few people know it even exists. Yet, the opt-out scheme will prevent leaflets in with your post, these are mostly from household name companies such as Virgin Media, BT, Sky, Talk Talk, Farmfoods, Pizza places, Morrisons and sometimes local companies.

There are two types of junk mail

direct mail addressed to an individual
door to door mail marked for “the occupier”

It’s the second type that this opt out can remove but the first type will always get through. The Royal Mail say that ‘The Occupier’ type mail is only 25% of the total junk mail.

How to Register

On the Royal Mail website, search on “opt out” and you’ll find how to download the PDF form you must fill in and return to Royal Mail. After two years, Royal Mail will kindly take you off the opt out list without reminding you. So you need to regularly re-register.

The Direct Marketing Association says more than a third of recipients respond “positively” to direct mail, so perhaps some of it is useful.