Safeguarding Your Accounts from Scams During the Holidays

While the holiday season is the time of giving, it is also, unfortunately, a time when scams and opportunities for fraud are on the rise. Those who shop from their phones and devices necessarily have to share some personal and financial information online, and they can therefore be vulnerable to fraud. Protect yourself as much as possible this holiday season from purchase and payment scams by safeguarding your personal, financial, and account access information as much as possible. Consider some common tips that can reduce the likelihood of succumbing to fraudulent offers:

Use trusted sites

Shopping for holiday gifts online has become a ubiquitous convenience that virtually everyone does to some extent. Those who make purchases online have the added stress of having to protect their personal and financial information every time they shop, log in, sign up for email or text promotions, or browse online merchants. It is advisable to shop only on trusted websites that you have patronized before and whose reputation is well-established. Also important is using caution when asked to reveal sensitive financial information and to only share as much information as necessary to complete the transaction.

Safeguard your account access credentials

It is never advisable to share accounts, passwords, login credentials, or one-time codes with others since you cannot control how the information will be further shared. Using secure passwords and double-authentication requirements help prevent unauthorized access and usage of your accounts. Using trusted sites with clearly-established account security protocols makes users less vulnerable to fraud and misuse. Many trustworthy sites will email or text a user when a password or security measure has been changed so that users have the extra assurance that no one can easily tamper with their accounts without their knowledge.

Reconcile your spending

It is easy to trust that transactions are clearing and account balances match up, but errors can occur, as well as opportunities for fraudulent misuse. It is important to review your bank statements every month (or more frequently) to make sure checks are clearing and available cash is as you expect and matches your own records. Matching your check registry, credit card statements, bank statements, and other periodical financial documents helps you ascertain that all spending is accurately recorded, and it alerts you immediately to an inconsistency before it becomes a headache to correct.

Investigate advertised offers before investing

While taking advantage of promotions through email, text, and social media is a popular way to save money and unlock special deals during the holidays, some offers may be too good to be true. It is helpful to exercise caution when receiving a lot of unsolicited offers and advertisements, especially from stores or sites you don’t typically use, and to investigate the veracity of each offer presented before signing up or sending money.

Confirm a charity is legitimate

The holiday months are the most popular time of the year for giving and donating, which makes them also vulnerable to scams. Before sending payments for what seem like worthy causes, you can take extra caution by making sure that a charitable organization is legitimate and registered with the state (where required), and that they are upfront about how much of your contribution will go the actual cause.

Use familiar payment methods

Be leery of sites or organizations that solicit money using payment methods with which you are unfamiliar, and try to select methods of payment that you can track. Companies that ask for unusual or atypical methods of payments for holiday purchases require extra caution. Keeping receipts—either in a file or in an online storage account—makes reconciliation and account review a much simpler and lower-stress task later on when a question or dispute does arise.

Checkeeper follows account security protocols to offer secure check printing and mailing

Checkeeper is widely used and widely trusted by businesses as well as individuals as a secure method for creating, printing, and mailing custom checks. Checkeeper follows account security protocols, such as:

·      Password protection on accounts

·      Bank-level encryption

·      Optional double-authentication requirements for account access

·      Backed-up data

·      Integration with accounting software for syncing and verifying payment data

·      HIPAA compliance for safeguarding confidential health and medical information