MONEYTALK PT. 1: Identity theft

[Stewart G Griffin]

Someone at work got his checking account hacked into.  This scared me enough to take some action;  i did the credit freeze thing as i heard/read on Clark Howard that it was a good thing.  It cost me $5 for each credit bureau---3 total of course.   In your state in may be free or cheaper.

i have a very high credit rating and substantial amounts in 3 accounts---i'm not bragging, i'm just stating my situation and why this made me especially feel i need to take action, but really anyone and everyone i think should do something about this problem.


Can you think of any other things you can do to protect you identity and credit or any other sites/discussions/readings you could point me to?

[bake74]

     Clark Howard rocks, my wife and I listen all the time and have gotten so much great info for him, another radio personality that is great with finances is Tom Sullivan out of New York, he used to reside in California until he went network.
     Oh yea, the credit freeze is great, we did it because we are planning on buying a house in 9 months and we don't need anybody else messing with our credit besides us.

[bobcooter]

I'm afraid that if anyone stole my identity, they would pay ME to take it back!

[78 Chevyrado]

one big thing i heard clark howard say was to have a seperate PC for all you banking.  never use your seperate banking PC for anything but banking and bill paying, no surfing, nothing.  sounds like a good job for the old PC when you get a new one.  i use my old laptop for that stuff.

[Stewart G Griffin]

Good idea, will do.  thanks.

[Irish_Alley]

so your saying you a old laptop that probably is affected  just due to its age and surfing history for your banking? i would have to say i would be using the new one for that and clean out the old one change passwords and all on the new one

[Stewart G Griffin]

Another good idea, thanks.

i see you can get brand new desktops and even laps for $450 or less?

[78 Chevyrado]

my old laptop is about 3 years old, has been totally blanked out, reformatted, and only windows and internet explorer are on it.  so I'm rid of anything it used to have on it previously.  i only get updates for windows and anti virus, and use it for banking stuff and bill paying.   The only way this will work though, is to completely wipe out the hard drive of the old PC and start over from scratch, reinstalling windows, everything.

The idea is that when you surf, you pick up junk everywhere, even if you watch what you're doing something slips in somewhere, while the laptop isnt perfectly safe, it has a lower chance of problems just from the point that i dont do anything with it but goto secure bank sites.  and i can have all the safety settings set to highest, which would be a pita to have setup that way on your normal use PC.

if a hack came out that took over all the windows PCs id still be screwed, but its unlikely ill have trouble from ads, popups, bad links, links that send you bad links, etc.   i also turn the laptop off when im not using it, so its not a constantly available target.

my main pc never gets turned off, and i use it everyday for everything, i pick up stuff fairly often, but i dont have any of my critical stuff on it, so im not as worried about it.  Ive got that one setup so no matter what happens i can be back up and running like nothing happens in about an hour or so.

[Irish_Alley]

i didnt know you could "completely" clean out a pc.

[muddpuppy01]

yeah fairly simple thing to do google doh ( department of homeland security ) computer wipe that eliminates everything then you would have to reinstall windows

[Irish_Alley]

might have to try it to my moms computer, see if it helps

[jdl71]

i didnt know you could "completely" clean out a pc.

Buy a new hard drive and install windows (and have your registration key) is the only surefire way I know of. Even C: /FORMAT C leaves recoverable data on there.

[78 Chevyrado]

Theres a program..  cant think of it now, as im kinda drunk     it's a Linux distro I boot from a USB drive, but it will write 000's or 111's to the HD to totally wipe out everything.  but so far just a regular format has sufficed for everything I've been doing so far.  I really dont bother with a total wiping of the drive too often, mainly only when there are clusters in question.   i also like to delete all the partitions on a drive before reinstalling windows, just an extra EASY step while I'm at it.


Edit:  the only thing in a computer that stores data even after a power outage is the Hard drive.  Bios does too, but let's not worry about BIOS.

so if you blank out the Hard Drive, all is lost, including the bad junk.  everything else loses all its data just by turning off the PC.

there will be some old data left after a regular format, but chances are real good installing windows over a formatted hard drive will overwrite most of the old used blocks.

[Stewart G Griffin]

i kind of figured that's what they meant when they suggest using an old computer.

i'm thinking i might just go back to writing checks and mailing them for now because while i am in the market for a new computer, i don't know how to "clean" the old one out.

In addition i only pay maybe 5-6 companies a month so that's about $3 in postage per month.  A cheap new computer is about $450?   It would take maybe 12 years for the computer to pay off!  This is sort of like the whole, "should i buy a new smaller car so i can get better mileage dilema."

[78 Chevyrado]

i kind of figured that's what they meant when they suggest using an old computer.

i'm thinking i might just go back to writing checks and mailing them for now because while i am in the market for a new computer, i don't know how to "clean" the old one out.

In addition i only pay maybe 5-6 companies a month so that's about $3 in postage per month.  A cheap new computer is about $450?   It would take maybe 12 years for the computer to pay off!  This is sort of like the whole, "should i buy a new smaller car so i can get better mileage dilema."

yep, checks are safer anyway far as i can tell.  the whole PC thing is just a convenience / timesaver.

Which makes me think of one other tip...  when paying bills online, use E-checks, NOT debit or credit cards.  they can screw you really bad if you use cards to pay.  google "cancel recurring payment".  the bank cant/wont stop recurring payments, only the people taking your money can.