ThisNext Blog

The other day, my sister had almost $1500 taken out of her checking account because, as a brand new customer to Paypal she mistakenly responded to a fraudulent Paypal phish email and the scum bags tapped into her personal account.

Thankfully, she acted fast, and her financial institutions were on the ball and very helpful.  However, she had to change a zillion passwords, re-open new accounts and sweat quite a few bullets.

And remember to always report any fraudulent activity like this to Equifax if this happens to you, they will flag your name so all the credit reporting agencies can monitor your accounts.

Among the many lessons we all learned from this awful stunt, is that protecting our identity is more important than ever, and it doesn’t stop with online protection. Our offices – be they home or personal – in many ways need to be well oiled machines. We need secure wireless, reliable data back up, good shredders and maybe even some environmentally conscious attempts…if you’re not completely worn out from trying to keep all your personal information your own.

We are not even close to living in a paperless world, which means we have a lot of valuable information floating around. Personally, I like shredding documents about as much as I like cleaning the bathtub, but Home Improvement Ideas discovered two awesome shredders that might make the task a bit more enjoyable.

For small Post-Its or other scraps of paper with credit card numbers, bank accounts, or passwords scribbled on them, these ADORABLE Mini Hippo Shredders are just the perfect size to shred small papers from your desk (and make you smile!)

Home Improvement Ideas also recommends this sleek silver paper shredder which can cross cut up to 12 sheets of paper in one pass through. I’m loving the price – it’s $58!

Backing up your computer has never been easier, safer or cheaper. There are a lot of services out there that let you let them do the work of saving all your files securely. ThisNexter FortressGame loves Carbonite Online Backup. For a mere $5 a month they’ll backup your files daily to an SSL server.

SmallBusinessComputing.com has a pretty informative (and flattering) article about Carbonite’s services saying,

“Carbonite installs in two minutes, runs unobtrusively and costs just $5 a month—no matter how many gigabytes of data you have to back up.

Best of all, there’s no user interface to learn or settings to decide upon: Carbonite watches you’re My Documents folder (and subfolders) for new or changed files, then automatically sends those files to your backup folders on the company’s servers. It’s so simple, yet works so well, you’ll wonder why someone didn’t think of it before.

…More importantly, backing up Documents and Settings also ensures the files stored in Windows’ Application Data subfolder — notably your Outlook .pst data file — are backed up.

For the security conscious, all user data files are encrypted before they leave your PC, and are sent via an SSL link (the same secure connection used by most major online retailers to protect your credit-card info during a purchase).”

To move one step closer to a paperless and secure office, Coconut recommends ID-Sign Digital Signature Software “Very nice digital signature software that makes paperless office a dream come true. No more paper forms flying around. It is secure, very easy to use, with a very intuitive interface. It also works with my USB crypto key, where I keep my keys and certificates.”

For more information about Identity Theft, visit the Federal Trade Commission’s website, IdentityTheftResourceCenter.org, or Equifax.