10 checks · Cyber Hygiene
Personal Finance
Credit card fraud is the most common form of identity theft (with 133,015 reports in the US in 2017 alone), and a total loss of $905 million, which was a 26% increase from the previous year. The with a median amount lost per person was $429 in 2017. It's more important than ever to take basic steps to protect yourself from falling victim Note about credit cards: Credit cards have technological methods in place to detect and stop some fraudulent transactions. Major payment processors implement this, by mining huge amounts of data from their card holders, in order to know a great deal about each persons spending habits. This data is used to identify fraud, but is also sold onto other data brokers. Credit cards are therefore good for security, but terrible for data privacy.
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| Done? | Advice | Level | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
Essential | Enable fraud alerts and credit monitoring through Experian, TransUnion, or Equifax to be alerted of suspicious activity. | ||
Essential | Prevent unauthorized credit inquiries by freezing your credit through Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax. | ||
Optional | Utilize virtual card numbers for online transactions to protect your real banking details. Services like Privacy.com and MySudo offer such features. | ||
Optional | Pay with Cash for local and everyday purchases to avoid financial profiling by institutions. | ||
Optional | Bitcoin is not anonymous. Its ledger is public and permanent, and chain-analysis firms routinely link addresses back to people, so a payment made today can be de-anonymised years later. Privacy-focused coins such as Monero conceal amounts and participants by default, but they have been delisted from most major exchanges, which makes acquiring and converting them harder. Treat crypto as a tool with specific, limited privacy properties rather than as a general-purpose way to stay private. For most everyday purchases, a virtual card is both more private and more practical. | ||
Advanced | Securely store cryptocurrencies using offline wallet generation, hardware wallets like Trezor or ColdCard, or consider long-term storage solutions like CryptoSteel. | ||
Advanced | Peer-to-peer exchanges such as Bisq and cash-based methods avoid handing your identity to a centralised exchange. Be aware that many jurisdictions now apply know-your-customer and money-transmission rules to these routes, and that deliberately structuring purchases to avoid reporting thresholds is itself an offence in some countries. Check what applies where you live before using them. This is a legal question as much as a privacy one. | ||
Advanced | Mixers and tumblers break the link between addresses, but using them now carries serious consequences that have nothing to do with your technical privacy. Several major mixers have been sanctioned or prosecuted, and exchanges routinely freeze funds with mixer history in their chain of custody, meaning coins can arrive tainted and unusable through no fault of yours. Unless you have a specific, well-understood reason and have checked the law where you live, this is one to leave alone. If your goal is simply private everyday payments, virtual cards and cash serve you better at a fraction of the risk. | ||
Advanced | For online purchases, consider using alias details, forwarding email addresses, VOIP numbers, and secure delivery methods to protect your identity. | ||
Advanced | Opt for deliveries to non-personal addresses such as PO Boxes, forwarding addresses, or local pickup locations to avoid linking purchases directly to you. |