Public Service Announcement - Real One This Time.

With all the hacking going on you must be at least slightly uncomfortable that your identity, or maybe some of your bank funds might get stolen.  The IRS and some Health Insurance data has been hacked, and hell, you may was well assume everyone has been hacked because if they haven't yet, they will be.

Also, you must assume that all of your information that you may still consider private is available on the Internet(name, address, SS#, Birthday, Mother's maiden name, previous addresses, etc etc.)  None of that protects you.

Here are the two absolute best things you can do to protect yourself.

1. Credit Freeze 

Placing a credit freeze means that no one (including you) can obtain a loan, credit card, line of credit, etc using your information while the freeze is in place.  There are 3, possibly 4 major credit sites that need to be frozen.

This link to the Transunion website will tell you how to place a freeze on your (or a hackers) ability to obtain credit in your name, how to temporarily remove it so YOU can buy that yacht or Cessna Citation 10 executive jet, then reinstate the freeze afterwards.  It might cost you 5 or 10 bucks each time you freeze, remove and reinstate a freeze but believe you me, 10 bucks X 4 ($40) tops to go through this process is much preferable to going through a divorce proceeding with a michele obama because some cracker from Russia stole your identity and michele is wanting to run for cover.  Though not having to sleep with her anymore is a benefit, it's not worth losing your identity, cash, and credit.

2. 2 Factor Authentication   

In brief, 2 factor authentication in practice works like this.  When you log in to a sensitive site, email, bank, etc, you enter your Username, Password, then if these are correct, the website/entity sends you via email or most commonly, via text message, a numeric code that you enter to complete your login process.

This means that even if someone knows your user ID and password, they're getting nowhere unless they also have your email or phone (depending on how you set it up) and can get past your email or phone's security to receive the email or text message.

Here are the entities that currently support this security.

Enjoy Maximum Security my readers !

A note.  Be sure to secure your email this way, because if someone gets your email, they can lock you out by changing the password and thereby eliminate the possibility that you will see emails that say things like "Your security details have been changed at verysensitivesite.com, if it wasn't you that changed them you might want to bla bla bla"

I wish obama would bla bla bla himself back to Kenya

Update:  Corrected the total amount you might have to pay to put a freeze on or take it off. (40, not 120)  And depending on your state, it might even be free.