ONLINE INVESTING, TIPS, TOOLS, TUTORIALS, TRADING, INVESTMENT RESOURCES

Will Rogers is quoted as saying “More important than the Return on your Investment is the Return of your Investment.”

To me that means you should diligently safeguard all your online investing account details and ensure you have a robust plan to achieve this.

The Bad Guys are Clever

The longer you’ve been on the internet the more it becomes an integral part of your life. It provides services that save you time, effort and hassle. It becomes your shopping plaza, your bank, your social calendar and many other useful things.

Of course to do this you have to ensure that the services you use are protected so that your details are known only to you. As you encounter more and more sites that require you to create an account with a user name and password the more you’re inclined to grow weary and end up by using the same details for each site you visit.

You convince yourself that life is easier that way. Unfortunately you are playing right into the hands of online crooks who use a myriad of ways to entice you to give up your information. You may even be caught out without realising it until its too late and the damage is done.

And of course there’s always the chance that hackers find there way into a database where your details are stored. Without you even knowing it your details are compromised.

Trust Nobody

So what should you do to make sure that you keep your account details secure? Firstly always be suspicious especially when visiting a new site on the internet.

If you have accounts at several online investing programmes make sure that the details you use for username and password are always unique. This way if your information is somehow compromised on one site then it won’t be able to be used against you on others.

Don’t forget that we humans are creatures of habit so if a crook finds your details on one online investment programme they are likely to test other similar programmes as there is a good chance you might have invested there as well.

Simple Strategies to adopt

It should go without saying that whatever method you choose to create user names and passwords you need to keep a record.

SIDEBAR: If your memory is anything like mine you can’t remember where you parked the car half an hour ago let alone what user name and password you are using on a site you visited three months ago.

If you are just a little creative with user names you’ll not only create new ones but they can also be used to remember when you joined. Let’s assume your name is Mike and you join a new online investment programme on 01 December. To help you protect your details and at the same time remember when the account was created you could use a user name like mi01ke12 (I’m using the UK date format).

For passwords something more sophisticated is needed. This is where it pays to do some online research and find a software tool that does all the hard work for you. You must create strong unique passwords for any online investment programme you belong to.

Free programmes that have received great reviews are:

1. Roboform
2. Keepass (the one I use)
3. Access Manager

I’d recommend you take each one for a test drive to see which one you feel most comfortable using.SIDEBAR: Don’t forget to change passwords regularly to provide an added degree of protection

Adopting these simple strategies will ensure that you can protect your valuable information easily and keep the bad guys at bay

Source:ezinearticles.com