Protecting your valuable assets

Tips to foil cyber crooks who cost us £1.3bn a year As our work and private lives move online and we spend more time in virtual worlds, fraudsters are keen to take advantage.

Brits were scammed out of £1.3billion in 2021, according to UK Finance – a collective voice for the banking and finance industry.

Its most recent report shows that fraud is very much on the rise, with the amount stolen going up by approximately 30% each year.

Phishing and social media attacks are used to steal your financial data, and these are becoming more and more common.

Many attacks have resulted from your data being sold on to data brokers without your knowledge or agreement.

They follow your online activity and digital footprint to profile you, then sell your data on the dark web to thousands of companies.

Some of these companies will look to sell your details on, while others will be keen to make money from it.

This is something that concerns me greatly. We can do what we can to protect our physical wealth, but when the attacks come in a form that we don’t understand, how can we possibly defend ourselves?

The first thing you can do to limit your exposure to these threats is to be more vigilant about what information you share with companies.

Something that I started doing was using a false date of birth where the information request was not necessary, such as a membership site or a mailing list – please don’t try this with banks or finance providers.

Another thing you can do is to clean up your virtual world, where your data is stored.

This won’t remove the risk but if your data appears in fewer places, you reduce the opportunities for the criminals. The first thing you can do is visit

Clean up your virtual world, where your personal details are stored online

haveibeenpwned.com. This is free to use and anyone can quickly assess if they may have been put at risk due to an online account of theirs having been compromised or “pwned” in a data breach.

You simply enter your email address and it will show you the sites which have previously been compromised and where your email may be at risk, along with other data. This then allows you to ensure your password to these sites is changed immediately.

The second thing you can do is to clean up where your email and data is stored. If you have signed up to a mailing list you no longer use, ensure your data is deleted from the site in case they incur a data breach and your personal data is compromised.

Another great free site is right.ly. This looks through your email inbox and creates a list of sites that use your email address. It then creates you an automated email that you can send out, telling them to delete your information under the GDPR legislation.

You can select the sites you want to send this email to before it goes out, so you accidentally won’t opt out of your favourite mailing list.

If you’re wondering why I am focusing on data security in a financial column, it is because a data breach could cost you thousands of pounds and creating wealth is as much as about protecting what you have as well as creating more wealth.

You protect your other assets, so be sure to protect your most valuable asset, too – your online identity.

For more money planning ideas search for WarrenShute.com