Posts

Are You Taking Responsibility for Your Personal Safety?

/in /by

For the most part, the local police department does not prevent most assaults or burglaries. That would require a cop to be everywhere all at once. Not happening. However, they do their best to capture and arrest those who commit these crimes. And, preventing crimes goes way beyond getting a home security system or making sure your doors are locked and your lights are on timers. But this is a start. The truth is, your personal security and preventing crimes starts with you. It begins with taking responsibility for your property and your personal safety.

Civilized Conditioning

You might have heard of civilized conditioning. Civilized conditioning is what mom and dad teach you about being a civilized human in a civilized society. That means not hitting, harming, biting etc. Just be nice and in general, respect authority.

You have probably (hopefully) been taught that it’s not okay to hurt other people, and this, of course, is a great thing. Most of us have been taught this from the time we were small children. This type of conditioning allows each of us to successfully get along with others in a society, but it also causes us to do nothing when we need to.

Civilized conditioning has had a negative impact on our ability to take responsibility for our personal security. This is really a double-edged sword. Sure, it helps to keep us under control when we are tempted to get violent with another person. But, it also prevents us from using a violent stance when we need to.

We are all aware that there are people out there who we could say are uncivilized. These people don’t have the same boundaries as the rest of us. When we come across those people, we have to take responsibility for our own safety. That might mean being violent.

You Are On Your Own

Bad things happen all of the time. Consider, for instance, installing a home security system. This is a great start and helps you to take responsibility for the safety of your property, your family, and yourself. Also, consider a self-defense class. There are several options for these classes from local courses and books to videos and online training. Additionally, teach your children self-defense skills. Even children as young as 5-years- old are definitely capable of learning techniques that can protect them. Finally, teach responsibility. You can’t always rely on the government or the police to protect you. Instead, rely on yourself.

Robert Siciliano personal security and identity theft expert and speaker is the author of Identity Theft Privacy: Security Protection and Fraud Prevention: Your Guide to Protecting Yourself from Identity Theft and Computer Fraud. See him knock’em dead in this Security Awareness Training video.

How to Protect Your Personal Data: 3 Things You Must Know

/in /by

There are two kinds of identity theft you must protect yourself from:

New account fraud: Refers to financial identity theft in which the victim’s personal identifying information and good credit standing are used to create new accounts, which are then used to obtain products and services. Stolen Social Security numbers are often used to commit new account fraud.

Account takeover fraud: Using another person’s account numbers, such as a credit card number, to obtain products and services using that person’s existing accounts or extracting funds from a person’s bank account.

3 ways to protect yourself:

#1. Prevent new account fraud: When a security freeze is in place at all three major credit bureaus, an identity thief cannot open new accounts because creditors can’t check your credit. If you want to apply for credit then simply unlock or unfreeze your credit.

#2. Prevent account takeover: Run Windows Update, also known as “Microsoft Update.” It scans your computer on a regularly scheduled basis for any necessary software or hardware updates. You can access Windows Update from your control panel. Make sure it is set to download and update critical security patches automatically. Use comprehensive security software and keep it up to date to avoid keystroke log­gers and other malware.

#3. Effective passwords: There is no such thing as a truly secure pass­word. There are only more secure or less secure passwords. Don’t reuse passwords across multiple sites, use different passwords for each of your accounts, use at least eight characters of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and, if possi­ble, symbols.

Robert Siciliano, personal security expert contributor to Just Ask Gemalto and author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Mobile was Hacked! . Disclosures