Safeguard Your Online Identity This Holiday Season

New research says that a third of us will do our holiday shopping online. This means beefing up your personal security to protect your identity

By The LifeMinute Team

November 25, 2016

According to Financial Expert Jean Chatzky, a third of us will do our holiday shopping online this season. Avoid common pitfalls--such as having your identity stolen--by following these simple tips:

Passwords Are Key

-They need to be long and strong. And that means at least 8-10 characters.

-They should be a combination of letters, numbers and symbols that come together to make a nonsense word.

-They shouldn't be the name of your pet.

-They shouldn't be a word you can find in the dictionary.

-Change them every three to six months to keep your identity safe.

Stay Updated

Make sure that when you get an update notice on your phone, tablet, or laptop, you want to install that update. "Updates are where the programmers put the security patches, so just making sure that you have updated to the latest version is another step that you can do toward protecting that all-important identity," says Chatzky.

Transact In Private

When you're out and about, don't transact on public WiFi. Transactions should be done on a secure network. Your secure network, preferably. "They should also be done on a secure site so be sure that you're looking for the signs that you're on a secure site in both the lower right and upper left hand corners of your screen," she says.

Beware Of Fishing

"We're seeing a lot of fishing this holiday season. So if you get emails from people that you're unfamiliar with or even from sites that you do business with that ask you to click on a link, don't click on the link," the expert says. If you want to do business with a particular site, you take yourself through your own browser to that website.

For more information about protecting your identity go to LifeLock.com.

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