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"We never say this before." Max, the one to watch for a good scream with Cricket. "Yeah!" Phone plan, streams, and standard definition. Programming subject to change. Fees, terms, and restrictions apply. See cricketwireless.com for details. Today on Radical Personal Finance I have a list of 18 tips, all of which are either free or very cheap.

Which, when put together, will dramatically improve the privacy and security that you will enjoy in your financial transactions. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

My name is Joshua Sheets and today I'm going to save you some money. I woke up Saturday morning and noticed President Trump's tweets alleging wiretapping. That made me think all weekend about security. I said, "How can I help my listeners be more secure in their financial transactions?" So today we kick it off with financial transactions.

Don't worry, I'm not going to talk about President Trump or his tweets. I just, that was what sparked the idea over the weekend. So I sat down and made this list for you. 18 tips and ideas that I think will be very, very useful for you. Before I start, number one, sponsor of today's show, number one, is Paladin Registry.

Paladin Registry is the go-to registry service that I recommend my listeners use if you're searching for a financial advisor. There are many great financial advisors and there are many great financial advisors that aren't part of Paladin Registry. But there are lots of advisors outside of Paladin Registry that aren't all that great.

And so if you were searching for a financial advisor, I recommend that you start your search at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/Paladin. That is a carefully vetted, researched list of advisors who have been proven to be ethical, proven to be conscientious, to be educated and qualified. Start your search at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/Paladin. That's the same advice that I give to my friends and family in person as I give on the show.

RadicalPersonalFinance.com/Paladin and link in the show notes for today's show. Tip number one, let's get into it. Simple but I see very few people do it. Cover the keypad with your hand when you are entering your pin code or zip code into a card reading device. The secret to the use of a credit card or a debit card is having a pin code and a zip code depending on in what context you're doing, whether you're writing as a credit card or a debit card.

Very simple thing you can do is just simply seek to conceal that information from anybody who's watching. Either somebody who's watching across the thing, counter, across the counter or somebody standing behind you who is watching over your shoulder or somebody off in the bushes looking through a spotting scope and collecting your data.

Just simply conceal the information from them. It takes no effort to do. If you punch your numbers in with your right hand, take your left hand, cover it over the right hand and conceal yourself when you're putting those pin code numbers into the machine. Or if they're being displayed on the screen such as when you put your zip code in, cover it up with your hand but then also use your body to obscure the screen best you can if you have an opportunity to do that to take care of the zip code.

Very simple. It's a good habit to have. Number two, if you are banking and using your mobile device, choose to use the actual application that you install on your phone from your bank rather than doing your banking through their mobile web browser system. Much better, much safer, and more secure for you to protect your information.

It's better now than it was in the past in terms of security for the mobile web browsers. But in the early days, there would be lots of fake URL addresses, fake security certificates, et cetera. And those things were a problem. But that's better now. But it's still best to just simply use your bank's phone application when you're doing mobile banking.

In addition, so if you do that, you'll be secure because the connection that's there with all the major banks, the connection that's there is secure and you will have a situation where you're using the bank's app and you're not going to be liable for any problems, any theft of the data.

So use the bank's app. If your bank doesn't offer a mobile banking app, then here are a couple of important things for you to do. Number one is make sure you're always using the actual banking app – banking website from your bank. That's important. Don't do banking on your phone using public Wi-Fi networks and turn off your Bluetooth connection when you're also using that because it is very possible for somebody to use the Wi-Fi network and to collect your information that's passing through that or to connect to your phone via Bluetooth.

Of course, this is uncommon and infrequent but just takes a moment just to think about. If you're using that, make sure that you always have all of your operating systems updates installed. You want to make sure that whatever version of phone software that you're using, whether it's iOS or whether it's Android, that you keep it updated consistently.

That's the safest way for you to make sure that any holes that have been discovered in the security systems of your phone have been controlled and have been corrected by keeping your operating system up to date. You should also consider using a mobile antivirus software on your phone. Sometimes that's also worth doing and we'll leave it there.

Number three, use strong passwords for all of your banking information. By the way, if you're saying, "Joshua, these are basic. I know this." Stay with me. I'm going to have a few more that are not so obvious and we're also going to talk about the debit card versus credit card controversy in some length.

So number three, use strong passwords that are different and that are randomized for all of your banking transactions. In fact, you should do this for every one of your accounts. The vast majority of people have one password that they use for everything. It's usually something like Fluffycat123. Now, here's the deal.

Anybody, any hacker worth his salt can break that – can force break that password very quickly just by putting in words and using a computer program that will just throw passwords at that. So simplest thing you can do is use a strong password that is randomized. So better than Fluffycat123 would be capital A lowercase c ampersand 46/moneysignd427.

That password is essentially unbreakable even by a computer system and it's especially unbreakable if each and every one of your passwords is different at each and every site. You might be surprised at how many of these strong passwords you can remember on the top of your head if you focus on it and actually input it.

I use complex passwords for all of my accounts and I have many of them committed to memory. And your fingers will develop a memory system when you're putting them in on a keyboard that will enable you to memorize them relatively easily. So you can actually memorize these. But of course the simplest option is to use some sort of password manager system.

There are a variety of these online. Just search for something like password keeper or password manager. I'm not going to – I use one called Gorilla Pass which is old school. It's not – there are some current ones, LastPass and there are other competitors as well. Do a search.

Find out whenever you're listening to this what the current latest greatest password manager is and make sure that you use a strong password for every account that you have a password for and that it's different for every account by using a password manager. One of the great things about the password managers is they will automatically generate passwords for you.

That's the functionality that I use. I just click Generate Password and it will generate a password using whatever criteria I've put in, lowercase, uppercase, symbols, no symbols, digits, no digits, etc. Then what I do is I just change a few things there. So even if the – so it's truly random.

Even if the computer were somehow not randomized which it is, I change it myself with just some other random numbers that I change. Then I know that I have a password that's very random and I use long passwords as well. So all of these things help to make sure that your password is secure.

Number four, activate two-factor authentication on all of your accounts whenever it's available such as banking. Activate the two-factor authentication. Now let me explain what this means. You probably experienced it where when you go to log in to an account, they say, "We need to send you a code," and they will text it to you or they will email it to you or they will call it to you.

It's a one-time code, usually three, four, five, six numbers, something like that, and you enter that in to authenticate yourself. This is called a two-factor authentication. Your first factor was the password. The second factor is the code. This is useful and helpful because if your banking information were stolen by a thief who was able to crack your password and was able to get in, they would also have to be in control of your mobile device in order to be able to access the account as well.

Well, if you have the mobile device, it's not going to happen. And so there's much less of a chance of them being able to access your accounts. This is helpful for not only banking but you should do the same thing with email accounts, social media accounts, your websites, et cetera.

Use and activate two-factor authentication whenever possible. Number five, if you want to stay on top of problems, make sure that you check your account information and your account balances very frequently. I recommend daily. That's what I do. I check it – I would say five to six days out of a week.

I balance my checkbook as in digital virtual checkbook. I use YNAB, which you should too. Sign up for a 34-day trial at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/YNAB. How's that for a pretty sweet ad? RadicalPersonalFinance.com/YNAB. That's what I use and I use it and reconcile it just about every day. I would estimate five to six days a week.

This means that transactions, if there's a transaction that's coming past and I don't recognize it, I'm going to know it immediately. It's not trying to go through last month's statement with hundreds of transactions across it trying to figure out what passed muster and what didn't, especially some of you who have multiple family members.

You have spouses. You have children who are using cards, et cetera, for some of their expenses. You need to be on this just about every day. It doesn't take a long time. It just takes just a minute, a couple minutes. It doesn't take long to pull up the app on your phone for your bank and look through the bank app and make sure you recognize everything.

But it can be very valuable to help stop problems at an early basis. It can also be very valuable in helping you to pursue your long-term goals with passion. Check your goals and make a daily goal. If you're paying down debt, I've done this. If you're paying down debt, pull open and I've made a payment every single day.

It helps me to stay focused. You write it down in your goals in the morning. I'm paying down debt and you go and make that payment. I've done this where I'm saving for a certain – if it's a certain purchase or saving for a certain income. Yes, it's great to have savings automated, but if your goal is to increase your net worth by X number of dollars per year every single day, you need to do that by every single day.

So you can pop open your bank app and make a transfer over. Again, writing it down in the goals every day. My goal is to become a millionaire by X date. Check that number. Use a dashboard system where you can know your net worth on a daily basis. Have things updated.

Check your performance, et cetera. I don't want to get down too far down that. But there's benefits to checking your account balances daily or very frequently that go beyond simply controlling in case of security or in case of compromise. So it will help you to stay focused on your goals and you'll make much more substantial progress if you're focusing on something daily.

Tip number six, buy and use an RFID blocking wallet. RFID stands for radio frequency identification. And this is those -- in many of your modern credit cards, you have that little chip that allows you to wave the credit card near the card reader and not to actually swipe it or insert it with the chip.

You just wave it near it. That's called an RFID card. And what that card does is it conveys a very low power signal to the device reader. This is the same technology that your cell phone uses if you're using your cell phone to using Apple Pay or what's Google Pay, whatever their version of it is.

So one thing you want to do is take a little bit of security with that data. Now, this is probably not going to happen to you. But it's very simple to protect yourself. If somebody wants to get access to your information, they just need to bump into you, pass you on the street, and they can -- with technology that's easily purchased in the consumer marketplace without any restrictions or controls, they can just simply use a cell phone and they can use it to read all of your personal information from your card.

So if you want to take security about that, you need to use an RFID blocking wallet. There are men's versions and women's versions available. I use an Access Denied wallet. Access Denied is a company that specializes in a lot of these. I'll put a link to the one that I have.

Just a very simple bifold wallet, men's wallet. But the thing I like about Access Denied is they actually check their stuff. Their wallets are rated to -- here's some jargon. They're rated to what are called the FIPS 201 security standards. FIPS stands for Federal Information Processing Standard. And that's a U.S.

federal government standard that specifies how the federal identification badges are going to work. And so if you are actually using one of their wallets, they're guaranteed and rated to do the job and block effectively the RFID. You can buy one for cheap online. I mean the one that I have is pretty cheap.

You can also make your own. I've never done it and tested it. But if you go on YouTube, you'll find many people who will teach you how to buy and use an RFID blocking wallet. Or you can just simply make RFID blocking sleeves for your cards. They sell sleeves in bulk online.

Or you can make them, I think, according to the YouTube things I've seen, you can make them effectively yourself with some tinfoil, et cetera. You won't be wearing a tinfoil hat but you'll have tinfoil wrapped credit card in your wallet. So that's something that you should do. It's very simple, very inexpensive to do, and it could potentially help protect you from the theft of your information, your personal data.

Incidentally, you should do the same thing with your passports. When you travel, all of your passports now have an RFID chip in them where they emit this low-power radio signal. This is very, very low power. It's designed that it has to be about one to five inches from the actual receiver.

So it has to be based upon contact. You're not going to be hacked into from across town. A card reader, a skimmer has to be passed near your card or your cell phones. But you should buy – and when you're traveling, you should buy and use a bag that has an RFID protection in it to protect your passport because your passport has all of your personal information.

You can do that with special travel ones that are like the things that go around your neck or the things that you stick in a waist belt. You can also do – I have one that works for your cell phone. This is one where you start to get into tinfoil hat stuff in terms of how do you protect your cell phone security.

Your cell phone – I posted a little bit about this on Facebook last night talking about some of the data that's out there and some of the ways that things are done. Your cell phone – you should always assume that your cell phone can be accessed by either a skilled hacker or by a government agent in whatever government that you're in.

Your microphone can be activated without your knowledge. Your cameras can be activated without your knowledge and the information and data that is coming from and through your phone including GPS location, et cetera. Even if you don't have the ability to – your phone isn't – the GPS doesn't have access to the GPS satellites.

The phone can be geolocated based upon tower proximity within about a three-foot radius by somebody who has access to that data stream. There are various – there are very skilled hackers who are able to do that or of course, many of the most skilled hackers are employed by the government which has authority over you.

So if you want to protect yourself, there are really only a few things that you can do. You could of course not have a phone. You could choose a phone which is – I wouldn't blame you for it. You could choose a phone that doesn't have – that has the ability to remove the battery.

That's where iPhones always stand down because the phone can be powered off and it is – it can be activated remotely even if it's powered off. But if you remove the battery, that can be very helpful. If you remove the battery, you can do – by the way, if you've not researched these things, I recommend Vice News.

Vice News has done specials on this. CBS 2020 has done specials on this. There are many mainstream news organizations that have done specials on this type of thing and the information has been well-known for the last decade and a half. It's only now starting to proliferate more and come out of where people think that you're crazy if you are aware of the capabilities that are there.

So, one other option is you can use a bag, a radio frequency identification – or a radio frequency blocking bag. I'll link to one that I think is probably the best one. The website is Mobile Security Solutions spelled M-O-B-I-L-E-C-E-C Solutions. They sell a cell phone bag and a laptop protection bag, which have the benefit of blocking all radio signals effectively coming in or out of the device while also it can protect from – the laptop bag is marketed as protecting your sensitive electronic devices from the impact of electromagnetic pulse.

So, that's one useful thing for you. You can purchase that kind of bag and use it. It's overkill for your passports or you can just simply buy a simple passport travel. Incidentally, on all these things, the thing you should keep in mind is very simple. You're almost never – the data is freely available for those with the skill to access it, but you're almost never going to be targeted unless you've done something.

You've committed a crime or you're engaged in some high-level business dealings or you're engaged in some – high-level business dealings would be the best things or sensitive – area of sensitive technology, something that would be of interest to somebody who either wants to steal your trade secrets, a business competitor, an unethical business competitor, or a foreign government who wants to steal your trade secrets.

So – but there's – your data is almost – no one is ever going to be – pay attention to it unless it's important. The problem is you're not going to change in the sense that you're not going to all of a sudden start to be aware when you're doing something important if you're not aware when you're doing something that's less important.

And the time that you're most going to want to have or understand your security options is when you don't have anything to hide. So, that's why I try to proliferate this type of information. Put in place good privacy standards when you don't have anything to hide and you will be well-served when you advance to a higher level of business craft where your information is more valuable or if you're engaged in politics, et cetera.

So, forgive me for getting sidetracked there, but I think it will – I think that will be interesting to you. So buy and use an RFID blocking wallet is number six. Number seven, to protect your privacy and security – this one, you knew it was coming somewhere. Use cash.

Use physical currency. Don't ever overestimate how valuable using currency is. Currency will protect your security because you're not going to be charged more. I was struck by how – when I've been working in the restaurant business, I worked in a Papa John's pizza restaurant for one week and I was struck by how vulnerable all of the credit card data for all of the customers was.

And it's the same in every single restaurant. Just simple things like adjusting the amounts, adjusting the tip, or even access to the devices. There are lots of shows where if you go on YouTube, you'll find where they talk about scammers and scam artists. You can – a restaurant worker, a waiter, a waitress could very easily – while they're taking your card, they can very easily skim the data right off your card.

Now, most aren't going to do that. But it's a risk. So if you just simply use cash, as an example, in a restaurant, if your bill is $86 instead of handing over your card, if you just put down $100 bills or $520 bills, you're done. You know how much the cost was and you're not going to be overcharged.

That's a very simple and easy thing to do to protect your security. It also of course has the benefit of protecting your privacy. Next tip, number eight, is don't enroll in store loyalty programs. So simple example, when you go to your grocery store, et cetera, and you swipe the store loyalty card, you're creating a database for your purchases.

That database is owned by the company. That database at some point in time, that company will – if they're big and they're well-known, that database will show up on the front page of a newspaper of the business section that they were breached and all that data, purchasing data, will be out there.

Purchasing data is also sometimes fed into that company's systems where it's used to tailor the marketing and targeting that's done by that company towards you or that data is available more broadly and it's part of your large profile. Not a big deal for the vast, vast majority of us.

After all, we have nothing to hide. The things that we bought at the grocery store or the department store or whatever, OK. That's fine. We have nothing to hide about it. It doesn't matter. But it creates a profile and if you're ever in a situation where you're targeted, that could be a problem for you.

So if you'd like to protect your privacy, use cash for your transactions. You will be able to maintain some of your privacy and you minimize the footprint that you are leaving. You'll minimize the profile that's established of everything that is known about you. Next, protect your cash from theft, obviously.

Now, people traditionally have said, "I don't like to use cash because it's going to – it puts more likely for being stolen." In the worlds that most of us live in, especially in a western society, we're not generally in places where there's a great danger of our cash being stolen.

And in many of our societies, I don't think people even carry cash all that much and so I really don't buy the theft danger. However, it is something you should pay attention to. If you are – and depending on the situation you're in, pay attention on different levels. Simply, I like to use wallets with two currency pockets.

The one that I have, again, the access denied one has two currency pockets. That allows you to keep maybe your larger bills in one currency pocket and smaller bills in another and you can cover your cash so it doesn't look like you have a lot of money with you.

You can also use two different wallets. When traveling, you should consider always having a wallet that you use for your daily purchases and then with just enough money to allow you to make purchases at the market or stores that you're visiting. And then you keep your serious reserves hidden away where you never access them publicly.

In large cities or places where pickpocketing is more common, that's a very common sense scenario. Now, you of course are driving. You're getting in your car, driving to work in your luxury car with your doors locked and you're pulling into your office building. You're going in. You're not riding an elevator.

You're just walking in. You're sitting at your desk. What's the risk of theft of cash? It doesn't exist for you. So, there's very little danger of theft. But you should consider and protect yourself as well. If you're going to go to a store, you should just simply have the cash that you're going to need to spend in the store.

If not, if you need to move with more, consider locking your reserves in a glove box or you can have a small lock box in your car. If you go to a sporting goods store, they sell these small little metal, primarily intended for guns, these small little lock boxes that attach to a piece of hardware in your car with a cable and you can hide that under your seat.

That gives you a useful place that's more secure than perhaps your glove box which can sometimes be forced open to protect your cell phone or your cash or your wallet if you're at the beach. So, consider that. Very simple and easy to do. Now, number 10 is going to take a few minutes because we're going to tackle this question of what type of card should I use for my purchases?

And I'm going to give you – this is much debated but I'm going to give you my understanding of it. So, my suggestion number 10 for you, consider using a credit card for all of your electronic purchases. Anything that you want to buy with a card, use a credit card.

This question is hotly debated in personal finance topics and it should be. The debate is simply that many people see the problems of using a credit card, a charge card due to overspending. If you're using a credit card, you can easily overspend, easily put yourself in a situation where you have – where you're going to debt.

To protect against this, many people recommend using a debit card because a debit card doesn't allow you to spend money that you don't have. And this is absolutely a compelling and valid argument. If you're in credit card debt or if you are prone to credit card debt in the past, I think you're better served using a debit card than a credit card.

Because the chances of the disaster scenario that I'm about to go through happening to you I think are pretty low. And yet you've demonstrated in your behavior that the chances of your winding up in credit card debt are pretty high. And so that's a bigger concern. And you can protect yourself in your debit card transactions as well, which I'll talk to you in just a moment.

But the debate is what's safer, a debit card or a credit card? So assume that you are – you spend the same amount of money, whether you're spending on a credit card or a debit card. That's a dangerous assumption, but we're going to assume it for now. And assume that you're not going to go into credit card debt, also a dangerous assumption, but let's assume it for now.

Question, should you use a debit card or credit card? Answer, credit card every time, hands down. A couple reasons for this. With regard to these cards, there's a difference in how they are – there's a difference in how a credit card and a debit card are subject to the law.

For credit cards, the law that governs the use of credit cards is primarily the Fair Credit Billing Act or FCBA. For debit card transactions, however, the primary law that governs them is the Electronic Funds Transfer Act. Now, these laws in some ways offer similar protections. But there are significant differences between these laws in the case of fraud.

In case of debit card fraud, under the Electronic Funds Transfer Act, your potential liability for fraudulent transactions is basically unlimited. You have up to 60 days to report a lost or stolen card under this act, and then after that, you simply lose whatever money was taken, even funds that may have been taken from any linked accounts.

And the impact of that could be significant. Now, the EFTA states that if the lost or stolen card is reported before any unauthorized transactions, then you have no liability. If it's reported within two days, then your liability is limited to $50. Or if it's reported within 60 days, your liability is limited to $500.

But after 60 days, there's no liability protection. So you do have protection, but you also have a significant amount of potential liability. Under the Fair Credit Billing Act, which governs credit cards, your maximum liability for fraudulent transactions is $50. And if you report the card lost or stolen before there are any fraudulent transactions, your liability is zero.

So based upon the actual law, the protection is stronger with credit cards. Now, what are the exceptions? Well, first, the obvious one is many of us have heard people say, "Well, listen, if it has the Visa logo or the MasterCard logo, Visa and MasterCard affirm that the protection is the same." That is true.

Based upon this difference in rules, many of the large companies – again, the large Visa and MasterCard usually who are sponsoring debit cards – said, "We're going to honor the fraud transaction the same regardless of whether it's a debit card or a credit card." That's good. There's good consumer protection for you.

The other practical thing is that many banks have also stepped up and said, "We're going to take care of things consistently as well." This has happened several times in my banking lifetime. I've had my checking account compromised through whatever way, my debit card compromised through whatever way, and I've had various fraudulent transactions.

With all the times this has happened, and I would say probably I would guess four – I could probably go back and find maybe four times in my banking lifetime. In all four times, I've been treated extremely well by the bank. They've refunded the money to my account immediately and they have immediately taken care of things and it was simple and it was no problem at all.

So, most of us have this experience of knowing that, yes, if you have an official Visa or MasterCard debit card that you're using where it has those logos, they're guaranteeing that they're going to treat it the same. They're saying that and also the bank is going to take care of things as well.

Most of us have good experiences, but you don't have the same legal protection and that's important to know. You also have the potential of having your life significantly disrupted. Credit cards without question have the strongest protection for you. You are protected from the liability of any unauthorized use of your credit card.

Any unauthorized use of your credit card. That's a big deal. But it's more than that. You also have, with a credit card, additional strength with being able to dispute your bill, to dispute any billing errors that you have with a merchant, somebody charging you more or less. If you were in that restaurant situation and the person swiped your card and added an extra $10 to their tip that you didn't notice when it was being re-entered into the computer later, with a credit card you can dispute that and you can force resolution.

You additionally, with a credit card, have the right to stop payment. And stopping payment is something that is really powerful and you do not have that ability with a debit card. You cannot stop payment or use that dispute transaction mechanism that a credit card has. So your protection under a credit card is much, much more than your protection with a debit card.

But probably the most important reason why a credit card is undoubtedly safer, if we're assuming that you don't spend more and if we're assuming you're not prone to overspending and winding up in credit card debt, the reason why a credit card is safer is because it doesn't disrupt all your banking transactions and you're not out the money right up front.

Let's say that you maintain a balance of $3,000 in your checking account. That gives you a cushion to where you don't have to worry too much about the money that you're spending. You maintain this cushion in there. If you're using your debit card and you have fraudulent transactions that are registered, your bank doesn't have to replace the money in there.

Not right away. And so if they've taken a couple thousand bucks out, that could be a big deal for you because you may not have the other money sitting in an easily accessible savings account and you're out the couple thousand bucks which you might need to pay bills. This is disastrous for people who live right on the edge financially.

You bounce your mortgage payment. You bounce your utility payments. Now all of a sudden you start adding up bounce check fees, bounce bank fees, et cetera, and your late payments. You might have a whole mess and the money is gone. It's out of the debit account. It's out of the – you don't know about it.

Now, a credit card, if the same exact thing happens on a credit card and your credit card is stolen, $2,000 is gone, you know about it when your statement comes in. You might have a few weeks. You might see it on your electronic – daily electronic viewing of your accounts and your dashboard.

You say, "What are these transactions here?" You cancel the card and you – yes, most people don't have that many auto payments set up to the credit card. If you do, you can still pay them from a debit card. So you cancel the card and you have several weeks until the statement is issued and then you have weeks and weeks from there before the payment is due and you can get the thing resolved in time without suffering the loss of the money out of your checking account.

So a credit card is definitely a safer way to go with regard to protecting yourself. If you can handle not spending more with a credit card and if you can handle not going into debt, you will be safer using a credit card for any card-type purchases. That will be extremely valuable.

Should you still have a debit card? Probably not. One of the most important things that most people aren't aware of is that you can have access to your bank account without actually having a debit card. Many banks will issue you an ATM card. An ATM card has the benefit of only working with a PIN to withdraw currency from an ATM.

So an ATM card is something that usually – it's not going to have the Visa or MasterCard logo on it. It can't be swiped. They call that – I think they call it a secondary transaction. You can only use an ATM card to get money out of your bank.

That is well worth considering. Sorry. It's called an online transaction and an offline transaction. An online transaction using a debit card is when the money is deducted from your account basically immediately and that's a transaction that requires you to enter a PIN. It takes the money out with an electronic funds transfer.

An offline transaction usually doesn't involve the transfer of funds for a few days. There you're usually signing a receipt, not putting a PIN. So it's much – there's a much lower proof of purchase when you're simply signing a receipt, swipe and sign the receipt. So that's the difference. So you can get an ATM card that only allows you to make the withdrawal from the ATM and doesn't put you in a situation where you can have that card swiped or used for more fraudulent transactions.

So consider the use of an ATM card. If you are also committed to being a debit card only user either for convenience or for a system of financial controls over yourself and over your spending, nothing wrong with that. You might consider setting up separate accounts and using one account that has most of your main banking transactions such as your car insurance payments, your bill payments, your mortgage payments and the other account that is connected to the use of a debit card and then just simply fund that account with the amount of money that you need in order to make the expenses from time to time.

That way, if your account is compromised and you wind up in a situation where you have fraud, your major banking setup is not being compromised. I don't think you should worry too much about this. I needed to be clear with the fact that a credit card is definitely the right solution from the perspective of consumer protection.

That is without – based upon my research, I can't see any way that that's not the right answer. However, most people overspend with credit cards and I've seen this so many times where people say, "Oh, we never carry a balance." At some point in time, they do and the data seems to indicate that people do as well.

Not – it's not immoral to carry a credit card balance, but it's very easy for people to wind up in credit card debt. So it is worth being very, very careful. If your bank protects you, then I think you can – this is a reasonable risk. I've always had – I bank with USAA every time and I've been banking with them since I was like 16 years old.

Every single time I've ever had fraud on my debit card account, they've overnighted me a card. They've immediately restored all the money in the account and everything was taken care of quickly even though I had a debit card account compromised. So that is a very appropriate – I think it's an appropriate risk management.

I hope that helps you to have some insight into it. But number 10 is consider using a credit card for any card purchases. Number 11, tip number 11, these will be faster. Minimize the number of credit cards that you carry in order to minimize the hassle of loss or compromise.

You shouldn't have 15 cards in your wallet. If you have 15 cards, you're hacking – doing travel hacking, et cetera, you should only have one or two cards in your wallet, the card that you're spending. You might have your ATM card, a credit card and maybe a backup one on a different network.

You're used to using an American Express but American Express is not accepted. So you simply switch to using Visa or MasterCard. So just simply carry fewer cards. That way if your wallet is lost, your wallet is stolen, you have less of a hassle. I feel like I shouldn't even need to say this but I've often seen many people's wallets that are just huge and filled with all kinds of stuff.

It's totally unnecessary. Minimize the number of cards that you carry. Number 12, I'm going to phrase this one as a question versus as a statement. Should you write CheckID on the back instead of signing it? Interesting question. Many people you have seen that will put – write CheckID or CID on the back of their card as a hope of minimizing the fraud.

Basically, I think the answer to this based upon my research, I think the answer to this is it doesn't really matter if you do and it doesn't really matter if you don't. It's not going to save any real fraudulent transactions from happening. It has some possibility of helping maybe.

It actually invalidates the card agreement. That should be noted first and foremost. If you were to research this officially from all of the card manufacturers, they say that the card is not valid unless it's signed. So if you write CheckID instead of signing Joshua Sheets, it invalidates it. Now, will it still be accepted?

Yes. We all know that the cards are accepted everywhere and I'm sure that somebody has probably been turned down because their card wasn't signed. But if they are, I've never heard of them. So it does cause some people to check the ID and that can be helpful to check the picture ID.

You've got to be careful because, of course, now you're exposing another piece of data to somebody who in theory could be stealing it. If your restaurant server – sorry, if you're a restaurant server. You guys are getting thrown under the bus. If you're a restaurant server and they're wearing Google Glass and they click their lips and take a picture of your credit card and take a picture of your driver's license, you've now exposed to them all your personal information.

You've got a problem. Obviously, practically, that's no big deal. The good thing about writing CheckID is sometimes in those situations where people would just swipe, they will actually request picture ID. In theory, it could help. In practice, I don't think it makes any difference. I actually have in the past tested my theories on this.

For a long time, I would engage in a practice of never signing my name with an actual signature that's mine but actually signing it without – in manuscript, not cursive, in manuscript. I would always sign with the name of the store's competitor. So if I'm at Home Depot and I'm swiping a card and I'm signing on the screen, I will write "Mr.

Lowe's" or if I'm at Publix, I'll write on there "Mr. Winn-Dixie." I've done that without exaggeration dozens and dozens of times, perhaps 60, 70 times, never had anybody blink an eye. What's so funny is I've watched that there. I've watched it in some point-of-service payment systems where as I'm signing, the signature pops up on the screen of the clerk, never been questioned on it.

So I don't think this really is a big deal. I don't think it's a big deal if you do. I don't think it's a big deal if you don't. I just looked at the cards in my wallet and interestingly, I've never even bothered to sign them. So they're completely blank and I've used these things without any problem.

I don't even bother to sign them. I probably will go ahead and write "Check ID" on here. I don't see any reason not to but I don't expect it to actually do anything. Tip number 13, buy and use a shredder for all of your financial documents. You can get a shredder for extremely cheap.

I have one that I bought from the Amazon Basics. I got a crosscut shredder and I put everything through that thing. And this is so, so important and so, so valuable to do. You would be shocked at how much information you have on your paperwork that comes into your house and how much information is easily available if somebody wants to come and just simply go through your documents.

I was always fascinated by the idea of working as a private investigator. This kind of skullduggery has always appealed to me and I thought it would be fun to be a detective or to be a private investigator or something like that. And so I used to read books about it.

And one of the most simple things you can do is go and read your competitor's mail. Go and read somebody that you're investigating. Read their mail. And picking up the trash from your competitor's office, your business competitor's office, or picking up the trash from your neighbor's trash can is a time-honored way to gain valuable intelligence on their arrangements and on their business practices and on their personal financial practices.

Even if you don't have, say, a social security number or a checking account number, etc., you can gain a huge amount of data from all those receipts, from all of the companies that the person is doing business with. So make a practice to buy and use a shredder for all of your financial documents.

I'll link to one, the one that I have. I've used it for a few years, Amazon Basics, just a simple one. Or go down to Costco, your office supply store, and just get yourself a good cross-cut shredder. That makes it so, so helpful. Number 14, get your financial documents emailed to you and/or if you are concerned about it, consider getting a PO box for financial mail or for personal mail.

The simplest thing, of course, and the freest thing to do is to get your financial documents emailed to your online banking statements instead of to have physical statements. I still think there's a place for physical statements and I think a lot of people like to get them. So you should consider getting a PO box for that, especially if you're involved in business or if you live in certain neighborhoods where you are concerned about your mail.

But the mail may have a tremendous amount of information and it's very simple for people to lift the information right out of your mailbox. Don't – I mean you got to always run the balance here between paranoia and practicality. I look at it and say, "What's the cost?" If you're just a normal person living in a normal neighborhood, is there a big cost if somebody grabs your credit card statement out of your mailbox?

It's hard to see it. I don't think so. But if you're wealthy, if somebody grabs your credit card statement out of your mailbox, that could be very important. Or if you are politically prominent, that could be important. Or if you are involved in – you're an activist of some kind, you're involved in a business or a lifestyle that is politically volatile.

Well, now all of a sudden things can change. So once again, you need to take steps to protect yourself and you got to do it in advance when you have nothing to hide. Otherwise, you're not going to know how to do it. It's going to sneak up on you.

You don't recognize that being the chief of the school board or being the chief of the local community service organization puts you in a place of exposure until one day when all the news crews are sitting on your sidewalk and there's something out there that you weren't expecting. So get your financial documents emailed to you using electronic documents or get a P.O.

box. It's a lockable P.O. box and have all of your personal information there, especially if you own a business. Or especially if you are in a sensitive position of some kind. Also consider mailing your financial documents from an external mailbox. It's safer for you to drop your bill payments and your checks into a locked US Postal Service mailbox at a separate location than it is to just put them out in your box with the flag up.

Number 15, encrypt your financial records and your files. Encrypt your financial records and your files. Got to ask the question, "Who are we trying to protect things from?" And you got to be practical about this and not paranoid. If you are the subject of a global manhunt, your privacy is shot.

You're not getting away. But if you're just simply worried about a competitor, a business competitor who's searching you out, just simply take some basic steps to use some simple encryption programs. There are a number of encryption programs that are simple and that are available online. And make sure that your financial records and files are encrypted and password protected with strong passwords.

Ironically, I think if you really want privacy and security, sometimes physical privacy brings a higher degree of safety. Everything on the computer is available, especially if the computer is ever connected to the internet. And so the computer is – I look at computers and I say just about everything is available to anybody.

That's different than maybe you keep a notebook at home or you keep personal ledgers at home, et cetera. Think of how easily and available and public your information is. Think before you make political contributions. The head of Mozilla was – the CEO of Mozilla was forced out of his job because he had made a political contribution primarily because he had made a political contribution to the – I think it was called Proposition 8 in California, which was the state amendment which sought to limit marriage to a man and a woman instead of seeking for homosexual marriage.

So he was forced out of his job because he made a political contribution. Consider your own actions and consider how your enemies can use those against you. Consider what they can find and how they'll use those things against you if your financial records are public. You might consider keeping things physically safe.

Now, the problem with physically safe is that you now have information that's subject to a warrant. So if you keep a notebook or a ledger with your personal financial transactions in it and you keep that in your safe at home, well, the warrant is going to have that thing cracked open in no time.

And as soon as it's open, there's no limitation on the information. There are powerful encryption programs that are out there that are freely available online that you can use and you can use it to encrypt your sensitive information. Easy to use, easy to do. Most people won't do it simply because they're lazy.

They don't think of it. If you are concerned at this, if you have things in your life that you need to protect or you are a high-profile person, you should consider taking steps such as making sure that you're using a separate computer that's never connected to the internet, disabling or removing the wireless cards, disabling or removing the Bluetooth information, using something like the signal data security bags from – I'll link it – Mobile Sex Solutions.

That's for laptop-sized bags. You've got to decide how hardcore you're going to be. But everybody should have simple good encryption and good – yeah, everybody should have simple powerful encryption protecting their personal information and have it backed up safely and encrypted in a separate location in case of fire, things like that as well.

Number 16, don't give out your social security number freely. Many of us are guilty of just simply giving our social security number to anybody who asks. You would be surprised at how few people you actually have to give your social security number to and it will dramatically increase your safety if you give it to very few people.

Years ago, I was working in life insurance and I remember one time, only one time out of hundreds of clients where I was taking an insurance application for a client of mine and I asked him for his social security number and he refused to give it to me. I was so shocked and he said, "Do I have to give it to you?" I had no idea if he had to give it to me or not.

It was just written on the form that I was supposed to write down the social security number. Now, I went later and I called the company and I said, "Does he have to give us his social security number?" And they said, "No." He never had to give his social security number.

You don't actually have to give your social security number for a life insurance application. Now, I think I'm not paranoid. I think that I want my social security number on my life insurance applications, but I learned a valuable lesson. I learned that he knew more than I knew and I respected him for that because guess what?

His application is in my desk drawer. I did my best to care for his personal information and to lock it, but I know lots of insurance agents whose files are stacked all over the place and there's information all over the place. I tried really hard. Our company, we had good standards.

I tried to go above and beyond. I tried to encrypt all the – I tried to upload, keep the records digitally, have good protection, and they did a lot from the corporate end as well to help secure those records. But the reality is that little pieces of paper with your information float around all over the place and it's up to you to control that flow of the information.

So don't give out your social security number freely. Most places will accept or create some other type of identification that's not your social security number and that's not your problem. That's their problem. This social security number has – just use of it has gotten extreme. Number 17, keep your personal information physically secure.

Much of identity theft, and I want to say most, but I don't know the data on this, so I can't prove it, and I didn't research it. So I'll just say much. Much identity theft is actually committed by a relative, perhaps a close relative, or a friend who gains access to your physical information.

They come over to your house. They slip into your office, pull open the desk drawer, and grab the information. They're a loved one or a family member and they're over for the holidays and they need the money, and so they use your information to inflict identity theft. So what can you do?

Well, keep your personal information secure. If I came to your house right now and I had about 20 minutes in your house unmolested, how much of your personal information could I be able to access? Go and change it. Get locking desk drawers. You can buy a locking file cabinet.

You can get a locking security cabinet. Buy a gun safe. Do something to protect your information. Digitize it so you can encrypt it and hide it on an encrypted password-protected thumb drive, and then shred it, but keep your personal financial information physically secure. Number 18, set up a circle of payment transactions to protect yourself and to protect your credit, your banking, etc.

In my personal financial management, I have every credit card set up to where there's always an automatic minimum payment that gets made. The minimum payment automatically gets drafted from one of my checking accounts. My checking accounts are automatically backed up in case of overdraft to a backup account and/or to a credit card account.

So there's a circle of protection in place so that if something happens, my whole financial life doesn't fall apart. Now, will I pay money for the cash advances on a credit card to just backing up a checking account, etc.? Yes, I will. I'll pay interest fees. But compared to the problems of having the whole system fall apart, that cost would be very small.

So set up your personal accounts so that you never neglect a payment. If you are late on a payment with a utility, whatever. Just send them the payment, pay the fee. It's no big deal. That doesn't affect your credit in the short term until they actually take out a judgment and go for the information.

However, on the other hand, if you balance a payment or you miss a payment with your credit card company, that's a much bigger deal because your credit card company is going to report that information to the agencies. And that information will be passed along. So set up a system of automatic transactions to protect yourself.

Make sure that all your credit cards are automatically paid. Make sure that your checking accounts have overdraft protections that are linked to your credit cards. Make sure that everything is set up so that if your information is compromised, that you are going to be squared away. Remember, you've got to do the stuff now to make good habits and protect yourself.

Now's the time. Don't wait until later. Don't wait until you have something to hide because it's a whole lot harder when you have something to hide. You're not going to know what to do. Protect yourself now. You have nothing to hide. That doesn't mean that your information should be publicly available.

And when you know that tomorrow your email company is going to send you an email and say, "I'm sorry, but 1.7 million of our customers' transactions were exposed in a data breach." And when you know that your credit card company is going to be on the news next week, it's your job to step up and protect yourself.

Protect your security and protect your privacy. I hope these tips have been useful to you. I tried to keep these interesting but practical. Again, all of these are either free or very cheap. So these are practical. You should go back through and do all 18 of these within the next couple of weeks if you're missing anything.

If you want more on this topic, I'd be happy to do more shows on protecting your security and your privacy. If you're interested in the real tinfoil hat stuff, let me know. I'd be happy to talk about that. You've got to always be careful with this stuff because there's a balance between paranoia and practicality.

And you can get super, super private, but it comes with a cost. And for most of us, it's just not worth the cost. But if you have suggestions, if there's anything I missed, please come by the show page at RadicalPersonalFinance.com and let me know. And as the music winds down, I ask you to do just a couple things here real quick.

Number one, if you haven't rated or reviewed my show on iTunes yet, please do that. Just pull up iTunes right on your phone. Leave a quick rating or review. Tell me it's great. Tell me it's terrible. But please, please, please, it's totally free. It doesn't cost you anything. And it's super, super helpful to me.

It makes a big, big difference. And finally, also, number two, if you've enjoyed and appreciated this content, please come by and consider becoming a supporter of the show, a financial supporter. You can do that at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron. You figure out how much money I saved you today and come and give me some of it at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron.

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