Your personal information be easily obtained by strangers by:
- Rummaging through trash and rubbish for personal information from statements and invoices
- Retrieving personal data from IT equipment including PCs, mobile phones, servers, USB memory sticks and hard drives that may have been disposed of carelessly or sold
- Stealing information such as bank or credit cards, identification cards, passports, through pick pocketing ,mail theft or housebreaking
- Stealing personal information from computers by breaching browser security, through spyware or malware
- Hacking of computer networks and databases to obtain personal data
- Impersonating trusted organizations to cheat victims to disclose their personal information through emails, phone calls or other forms of communication
- Befriending strangers on social networks then taking advantage of their trust to get private information
- Mail that is sent from banks or institutions, and even new credit card offers which contain valuable personal information can be stolen from your mailbox. Choose passwords and PINs that are hard to guess and will protect your information.
Use the following guidelines for passwords:
- Do not use the same password no matter how convenient, for all of your accounts. Choose different passwords for your different accounts. This also applies to any type of online registration that will require a password
- Avoid passwords and PINs like dates of birth, numerical sequences that are common, phone number, digits of your identification cards and social security number
- Good passwords should be a mixture of capital and small letters, characters and numbers, and should be at least 8 characters long.
- Never store passwords or PINs on your computer
