By Diana Palmieri
There are many risks associated with brokerage accounts that can cause concern such as interest rate risk, market risk, and the like. There is another risk you may or may not be aware of: hacker risk. This year, I personally received three bogus e-mails in my inbox from hackers pretending to be clients. Thankfully, I knew the clients well and realized the language combined with some misspellings within these e-mails sent up a red flag that led me to immediately contact my clients. One of the e-mails did not actually ask for money but wanted to know how much liquid cash was in the account and that I should answer via e-mail as “I will be busy all day and in meetings.” Another was some crazy request to send a $50,000 wire to a bank out of the country for “some nice furniture.” The third was another request for money to be wired to a foreign bank. Additionally, another colleague of mine actually received an e-mail with an attached letter that had a forged e-signature from the client requesting money from a brokerage account be wired to a foreign bank. I am just one person in one firm; can you imagine all that is going on worldwide?
These hackers are relentless. What can you do to protect yourself and your accounts? I personally started the practice of changing my password every 3-6 months. I try to make my password virtually impossible to figure out by using punctuation (like #, $, % etc) within the password. Also recommended are changing the security questions associated within these accounts periodically. You should get into the habit of doing this. It may be annoying, but I gather it would be far worse than annoying if someone was able to get to your money. If something like this happens to you, aside from what I mention above to safeguard, contact your e-mail provider and let them know what happened.
This past weekend I came across an article about criminals successfully hacking into online brokerage accounts. When you sign up for these types of online accounts, you usually have to include banking instructions so that you can send or receive funds electronically. These online companies do have very secure Web sites, but relentless criminals will keep trying to hack in. If you own one of these types of accounts online, be wise: Change passwords and update security questions often.
Technology is certainly a great thing. We can all appreciate fast, easy steps associated with signing a document, sending money to family, or paying bills electronically. With that comes a price, though. Be careful and be aware of everything you do online.
Diana Palmieri is dually registered with Vanderbilt Securities LLC and H Beck Inc., which are unaffiliated. Securities offered through Vanderbilt Securities LLC, member SIPC/FINRA/MSRB.