Hello again friend! If you are reading this I know you and you know me because I know everyone and everyone knows me. You believe me right? Well, if you don’t you are not alone, I had a friend of mine that did not believe me either, so I told him to name someone. He said “fine, Tom Cruise”. I said “Oh ya, I went to high school with Tom we are good buddies”. So we flew out to Hollywood and went to Tom’s house. We knocked on the door and he answered and said “Hey Jeff! Good to see you again!

Listen, I was about to have breakfast why don’t you and your friend join me?” So we had breakfast with Tom Cruise. When we got finished my friend figured it could have been a fluke so I told him to name someone else. “Barack Obama” he replied to which I said “I went to college with Barack and haven’t seen him in forever.”

So we flew to Washington D.C. to meet Barack Obama. We were on the White House tour when Barack went by and noticed me and waved me over and he said “Jeff, so good to see you again! I was going to meet some heads of state but they can wait. Why don’t you and your friend have coffee with me?” So we had coffee with the President. When we were finished my friend still didn’t believe me so I told him to name someone else. “The Pope” he said, to which I replied “Oh ya, I went to seminary with the Pope.”

So we flew to the Vatican and were in the square with all of the people. I said to my friend “look, he will never see me down here, I know all of the guards, I will be on the balcony waving with the Pope in 30 minutes.” So 30 minutes later I was on the balcony waving with the Pope. When I got done and got back to my friend there were paramedics all around him and I ran in to see what was wrong. They informed me that my friend had a panic attack, so I went over to him and asked what happened. He said “Ok, so maybe you know Tom Cruise, the President and even the Pope, but I lost it when the Japanese tourist next to me turned to me and asked…”

“Who is that on the balcony waving with Jeff?”

This is a funny anecdote but it can illustrate a very real point in the world. Who really does know you? In the world we live in today where information flies over the airwaves freely it is becoming easier and easier to compromise important information. There are hackers out there right now looking to get their hands on your bank accounts, credit cards, social security number, anything they can use to commit fraud in your name and hurt you financially. In today’s world this is a very serious risk, but what can you do about it?

Simple Tips for Keeping Your Information Secure

Here are some simple tips that I think can help with keeping yourself secure.

1. First, never open an email if it looks suspicious, and definitely never download a suspicious attachment.
   
   If an email looks suspicious you are likely better of deleting it than risking a virus on your computer.
   
   
2. Second, use a few passwords.
   
   Granted it isn’t as secure as using a different password every time, but personally, I use 3 different passwords for my accounts. One I use almost exclusively for sites that do not deal with my personal information. I call this one my game password because I normally use it when I subscribe to an online game that I am playing or miscellaneous sites that are not financial or email related. Then I have what I like to call my secure password. This one I have put some thought into making sure it contains several characters and a mixture of numbers, letters and characters so that it is harder to crack. I use this for banking, credit cards etc. Then I have my third that I use for email accounts and such. I do all of this because if one password becomes compromised someone does not have access to everything that has my name on it.
   
   
3. Finally, try not to keep your personal information on your computer.
   
   Your computer is possibly the most easily compromised part of the equation. If a simple tracking program sneaks onto your computer and you have a word file named “passwords” where you keep your passwords so you don’t lose them a hacker instantly has access to all of your passwords and in an instant pretty much your entire personal life. Similarly if you keep banking information etc., on your hard drive, it can become compromised the same way. Banking sites pay large amounts of money to keep their data safe online - so use their services and let them be liable for compromising your information.

These tips may be very simple, but I think that if you take even one of them to heart it could help to make sure that you don’t know everyone and everyone doesn’t know you.