Common Scams to Reach your Online Information and How to Avoid Them.

Common Scams to Reach your Online Financial Information and How to Avoid Them.

All of us who are baby boomers know about the Flim Flam Man.  In a variety of television shows and old movies, there is someone on the move and on the take, working an angle, seeking to slick us out of our money.  Barbra Streisand even wrote a song entitled Flim Flam Man.

But the Flim Flam Man of today’s world is not going to look like he used to look.  He is not going to be that slick-talking confidence man most of the time (although he may be that, too.)  He is going to be unseen on the other end of your Internet connection, or electronic device.  And he is far more sinister and dangerous than he has ever been.

Most of your assets are not in your home.  Most of your assets are financial assets.  And many are available on the Internet, waiting to be accessed, used, or taken.  We think they are secure.  But it is much like having large amounts of cash sitting on the kitchen counter and leaving your doors unlocked.  Or if you do have a lock, it is a lock that a common skeleton key can open. You have no alarm system.  You have made it so easy to get it.

Does this sound as if this cannot really be true or that it cannot really apply to you?  Think about this.  You lose your cell phone, laptop or tablet, and you have no security code necessary to get to your emails.  Someone opens your emails from your bank.  They get on line and they plug in some of the most common passwords people use, tough ones like password, password1, or 123456.  How long do you think it would take an experienced hacker to work through every pocket of information about you using this elementary not-so-much-of-a-password, after all, password?

And they can worm their way into your email, too, and get to it whether they have one of your electronic devices or not.

Now that I have your attention, here are some common sense tips that will help you avoid the Flim Flam Man most times.

1.        Have strong passwords, and change them from time to time.  As noted, the most common passwords, far and away, are password, password1, 123456. Others are letmein, monkey, 11111, 1234, 12345678, QWERTY (the letters on the left top set of letters on a keyboard), abc123, baseball, and football.  The trick is to use passwords that contain information truly unique to you and not something which one can look up easily.

2.       Activate your electronic device password, and use something unique.  If someone gets your electronic device and can get into it, you have effectively given this flim flam man (and he does not even have to be much of one) a key to much of what you own.

3.       Get an app that allows you to find your lost cell phone, laptop, or tablet.  If you cannot find your device, you hop on the Internet, plug in your code, and a GPS system tells you where it is.

4.       Scareware.  You get a pop-up on your computer that says your computer is infected with a virus, and you are invited to download a program to fix it.  IGNORE these phony warnings.  They generally will infect your computer with a virus, and perhaps obtain information from your site.

5.       Do not open emails or links from people you do not know.