Top Five Wallet Risks: Is Your Wallet Threatening Your Identity?
The type of material one carries in one’s wallet tells people who you are and what you make, where you live and how you spend. But in the wrong hands this could be deadly. Your Social Security Card, pay stub, occupational health membership card, even your health membership card can be used to social engineer a password or reset at a moment where your email account is compromised. Hackers are that clever, and in this world of online job competition they are motivated indeed.
1. Too Much Information
Take a look at the information inside your wallet. The worst type of identity slacker has their computer password or even printed out documentation with their passwords on it folded inside. This is the mother lode to a hacker looking to hack your corporate account by way of your personal email account. Little strips of paper and notes tucked inside for later use can be forgotten, but a hacker has plenty of time to figure out why they are so significant to you.
Solution: Carry a sport version of your everyday full wallet. reduce the full wallet and use it only during travel or International commerce, such as stock exchanges, border travel, or purchasing cruise tickets or anywhere you’ll need passport level documents with you. Keep a drawer in your desk with spare bit of addresses passwords, and other task reminders. If you think you need the information somewhere in your everyday travels, transfer it in code to an email. A hacker won’t even know what it means in a sentence or subject line but you will.
2. Stacking the Deck
Another crime of wallet stuffing is carrying every credit card you ever got in a rubber banded stack. This can let thieves know you won’t miss one if it goes away or if you copy them the job you’ll have canceling every card will give them enough time to run up some charges. Hackers have bogus mail drops they can ordered goods delivered. Do NOT keep blank checks in there “just in case”. Keep your checkbook separate or have your wife carry it in the purse.
Solution: review what cards you carry every day and slim down the deck.
3. Layers Upon Layers
If you can’t tell tell by one look at the cards in your wallet what is missing, reduce down the number of cards and information you carry. Just trying to check if everything is there could take another ten to fifteen minutes hackers can use to set up a bogus account and use it to qualify for charges. Pickpockets know to steal the cards and information behind the visible layer. A man finds he left this wallet behind and has no idea someone has looked through it and seen what cards he has, what car he drives and his work and home address.
Solution:
4. Schedules
That work schedule or the department’s work layout plan? Thieves really want to get their hands on these. This shows where you will be (and where your car will be left unattended) and when certain co-workers of yours will be present or not. Why do thieves and hackers want to know when you are not at home? because they can drop by you place and use your router or hack your desktop.
Solution: Keep your schedule online in a scanned version or text yourself pertinent days and hours you need to be at work.
5. The Phone as PDA
Think twice before committing a lot of sensitive information to your portable device or planner. If your phone is stolen, what will be more compromising, the renewal of phone service, activation of a new device, or chasing all the Internet access services you accessed by phone? And how much information about you social network is in there? Hackers usually start with emergency contact data, since this is a close relation to you and subject to being more vulnerable to social engineering.
Solution: carry either your cellphone with ID scanning and smart payment option and some cash or your wallet, but not both. That’s two payments methods muggers can steal that hackers can enjoy all night long online. Or at least make sure you use a password on your phone that hackers can’t break.
Source: ClickJacker.com – July 30th, 2011
