HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — In 2020, 4.8 million people were victims of identity theft.
This Identity Theft Prevention and Awareness month, experts want you to know how you can stay cyber safe:
- If you have kids or pets, experts say it's not a good idea to make their names your password.
- Make sure that you're checking your credit card statements monthly and are looking for foreign purchase.
- Create new passwords quarterly and keep your cell phone and computer software updated.
"That's a part of what the bad actors go look for. If there's a breach that happens, with Facebook, with Yahoo, with Google, and so log-ins and passwords are part of what they gather in those breaches. and then what they do is they try to use those logins and passwords in other places to determine if they can actually gain access to things like banking portals, to credit card portals, and you're absolutely right, to power utilities, but believe it or not even government and state portals like unemployment," said cyber security expert Stephanie Benoit-Kurt.