Wheatworks Blog: Financial Matters

Here’s one to stir you up. Some bankrupt lenders are literally “trashing” the financial documents of borrowers, throwing names, addresses, social security numbers and financial records into dumpsters for any identity thief to find and use.

The consequences for the bankrupt lender? None. How do you prosecute a company that no longer exists? In businesses like these, greed trumps ethics every time.

Read the article: Bankrupt lenders throwing away your privacy

Without prosecution for this behavior, don’t expect fear of legal consequences to stop this type of irresponsible behavior.

I wrote yesterday about Bruce Schneier’s Password Safe. I use it and I recommend it. It makes password security easy.

Today, think about the financial information you have stored on your computer. Is it in a spreadsheet in your “My Documents” folder? Do you have brokerage or retirement account reports saved as PDF files on your desktop? Is your tax return stored for any good hacker to see in your tax software’s data directory?

TrueCrypt, http://www.truecrypt.org/, is free open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux. It is the best tool I’ve found to protect my financial information. I’ve used it for years and do not fear the loss of my financial data … or any other data, files, photos, etc. that I have encrypted. All my USB memory keys are encrypted with TrueCrypt and now (after the release of version 5 last week) my hard drives are too.

In fact, the BEST feature of TrueCrypt 5.0 is drive encryption. You can use TrueCrypt to encrypt your entire hard drive so that, without the correct password, no one can access your computer.

Caution: Even if you protect your computer with TrueCrypt, a weak password is a no-no. I use passwords of 20 random characters containing upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols. Brute force efforts might crack them give enough time, but I have nothing that warrants the time a brute force effort would entail.

Here’s an example of a strong password:

K8dn20f^j3#(IaQL1@gM

With a strong password, TrueCrypt and Password Safe, you have a lot of what you need to protect your financial data. All three are free!

This morning I posted the first page to the new web site IdentityTheftChecklist.com. It offers a quick, “What To Do” to respond to identity theft.

Because I warn my friends about securing their identity and protecting their financial information, more and more frequently I field calls, “Rick, someone stole my identity! What do I do?”

IdentityTheftChecklist.com is my effort to put together a list of the steps I would take if my identity were stolen. It’s a quick answer to, “What do I do?”

I’ll fill in the details in the near future, but right now, there’s enough information about what one should do when their identity is stolen for them to get started with their response to identity theft.

Check it out at: