208: How to Protect Yourself in Today’s Digital Landscape

Hey everyone, I want to make sure you know that the 2025 Live Wealthy Money and Wellness Conference for Female Physicians is about to go on sale on May 29th, 2024. And the only way to be able to register on May 29th is to be on the waitlist. And the waitlist is the only way to get $500 off and to basically get first access because our last conference sold out in a month. 

Our current waiting list is almost, I think it might be over 500 people at this point, and we only have about 40 rooms reserved at the highly discounted, I think it’s like 50% off the Four Seasons. And so you definitely want to get on the waitlist, even if you’re only remotely interested in attending. And the way to do that is to go to WealthyMomMD.com/conference. You’ll see the details of the conference and you’ll see a button to join the waitlist and to get first access as well as some footage from the Marival conference. 

I really, really hope to see you there. It’s going to be amazing. I mean, come on, three days, or is it four days, in Hawaii at the Four Seasons with amazing women and speakers and the beach. I can’t really think of anything better than that. So go to WealthyMomMD.com/conference. And I really, really hope to see you in Hawaii. On with today’s episode. 

Welcome to The Wealthy Mom MD Podcast, a podcast for women physicians who want to learn how to live a wealthy life. In this podcast you will learn how to make money work for you, how you can have more of it, and learn the tools to empower you to live a life on purpose. Get ready to up-level your money and your life. I’m your host, Dr. Bonnie Koo. 

Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode. So today I want to talk about online security. It’s always been an important thing, but I feel like it’s more important now than ever, now that everything is or has been online. And you’ve probably heard that pretty much every major company has a security breach. You get something in the mail or maybe an email saying that your information was exposed. And so the question is, what can you do to protect yourself? 

In fact, the other day, I got an email about a big AT&T breach. Now, I don’t have an account with AT&T, but maybe I have in the past because otherwise I don’t know how they would have my information. But the notification said that my email address and my social security number were exposed. So obviously, that’s not very pleasant because if someone has your social, they can potentially open credit cards in your name, et cetera. 

So what are the different sorts of layers of online protection and what are my recommended companies that I use? So the first level of protection is a password. Now, when I was much younger, around college time, I only had two passwords. I had a low security and a high security password. And I did that for many years. And obviously that is not a good idea. 

And most of you have several sensitive accounts. What I consider sensitive or sort of high-risk accounts are any financial accounts, bank accounts, investment accounts, and social media. Pretty sure all of us have had a friend whose Facebook account got hacked and started sending weird messages to you. 

And so there is no way you can remember every single password, assuming they’re different. They are different, right? And so you need to have a password manager. I’ve been doing this for a long time and it’s also a great way to share with contractors and employees if you’re a small online business like myself. I personally use 1Password. 

In the past, I used LastPass. And so you may have heard me talk about LastPass. I recently made the switch. And the main reason is because LastPass was having some security issues, which is not a good thing when it’s your password manager. So I switched to 1Password after doing extensive Google research. And the interface is so much better, I like it a lot. And it’s been really easy to share with my team. 

And that’s the beauty of a password manager. So I have a family plan and so you can add family members, and you can add guests. And that’s how I have my assistant, two assistants on at this point. It’s really easy to revoke access when you need to. And it’s a great way for everybody in the family to have secure passwords for, really, every account. Because even if someone breaks into a so-called not high-risk account, your information, like your address, is going to be there and other things. And you just don’t want bad people having access to that, right? 

Another feature I like about password managers is that they’ll also let you save your credit card information, although that makes online shopping a little bit too easy. And they have secure notes. And so I like to have a secure note for the family’s health insurance information so I have it all in one place so I’m not digging around for information.

I have one for travel information. So things like our frequent flier accounts, our KTN numbers, that’s global entry, all that kind of jazz, passport numbers, et cetera. And so that’s on their secure platform as well. So that’s 1Password. When you Google it, it’s going to be the number one and then password. 

The next thing that I think everyone also needs to have is identity protection. Now, especially as physicians, we really don’t want our information out there, our home addresses, et cetera. And it is way too easy to find that information online. It’s actually really scary. And so you can spend a whole lot of time trying to remove your information from all these data brokers, but there are honestly just way too many. 

And so I actually have two services, and I’ll tell you why I have two. The first one I got was called DeleteMe. And basically it just scours the internet for your name and brokers and it removes them. And you can also submit things. So I will Google myself now and then to see if there are records of me and occasionally I do find it. And so I just submit it to them and they usually take care of it. Every once in a while I have to do it because they can’t do it on my behalf. 

And I don’t remember how much the services are for DeleteMe or 1Password, but these are not very expensive services. I have a resource page, actually. If you go to WealthyMomMD.com/resources, you’ll see a list of my recommended online security tools. There are links and some of them are my affiliate links at no extra cost to you. And so it’s a great way to check them out. Pretty much all of them have some kind of free trial period depending on the tool. 

So that’s DeleteMe. And then after Delete Me, I actually got another program called Aura, A-U-R-A. Now, many of you may have heard about LifeLock and that’s a pretty popular program. But after, again, my extensive Google research, Aura was the name that kept popping up as basically superior for many different reasons. But I really like them because they offer several services in one place. 

And so they have similar functionality like DeleteMe, and so they’ll look for my information and remove them from data brokers. They also search the dark web, which is basically where everyone’s information is leaked. And they let me know if my information has been leaked. They give me weekly notifications and any alerts that I might need to know about. 

So actually, I’m opening it now on my phone. And I think this is actually where I saw the AT&T breach that came recently. Yeah, this is where I saw that. And they just take care of a lot of things on my behalf. I’m just taking a look here. And so, oh, they also monitor your credit score. And so that’s always nice. They also provide a VPN service and they offer two levels for your phone. 

And so they offer just like a really simple lite, when I say lite, meaning that it doesn’t use up a whole lot of battery power or even like memory on your computer, just kind of make sure that basic things like malware is blocked. And if you want a full blown VPN, which basically masks your IP and encrypts things, that does take up a lot of resources. And so you only want to use that when you are maybe checking your financial accounts, et cetera. 

Now, a VPN is also great for when you’re traveling because, well, not just traveling, but if you’re using Wi-Fi, most, I think pretty much every Wi-Fi network out there isn’t really secure. And so you’ll want to use VPN when you’re on a public network, especially when you’re traveling. 

And I don’t know about you, but when you travel to different countries and you have kids and you’re trying to watch Disney Plus or whatever, sometimes they don’t work because you’ll get the error of not available in this country. But with VPN, it’ll basically give you a US-based IP address and that’s a great way to get around it. But again, it is resource intensive and so you want to make sure your device is plugged in if you’re doing Chromecast, for example. 

Now, if you’re at home, people always ask me, well, do I need to have some sort of special protection with my home Wi-Fi? I mean, maybe, maybe not, but there are some things that you can do. So one thing I recommend that’s just super easy to do, well, two things you could do that are really easy. 

One is you can make your Wi-Fi network so that it’s not publicly searchable, meaning that you’d have to directly enter the Wi-Fi name. And, obviously, having a password. I hope you have a password versus anyone can join. 

Another thing you can do is set it so that only the devices that you have specifically specified can connect to the network. And so that’s just something you do once when you get a new device, and then it’ll only let those devices connect. Now, this can be annoying though if you have guests that come over and want to use the Wi-Fi, but just giving you some really easy options. I personally do not use VPN at home, although I definitely can on my home computer. 

Another thing I like about Aura is that I can add my whole family. I probably have some kind of family plan, obviously. And so Matt’s on it. So is Jack as well. And so that actually brings me to the next thing I want to talk about, which is credit card monitoring. 

So I mentioned Aura does that already, but the easiest thing you can do is to just freeze your credit report at the major agencies. Now the three major agencies are Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. And so it is free to do that, you can just go to their websites and freeze it yourself online. 

And I think at least once a year, you’re allowed to get a copy of your credit report for free. And so don’t forget that, meaning you don’t have to pay for it. But if you have a monitoring service like Aura or LifeLock, then you can get that pretty much every time and they’ll tell you your score increases or decreases, and they’ll tell you why it went in either direction. And so it’s just good to see that and to periodically monitor it if your credit report isn’t frozen. 

It’s so easy to freeze. And so I would just do that unless you’re applying for a lot of credit cards or loans, then obviously you have to unfreeze it. The annoying thing about unfreezing it for credit cards is that, for example, like when I was opening a Chase card recently, they don’t tell you which agency they use to pull credit. And so you basically have to unfreeze all three agencies when you’re applying for a line of credit or a loan. 

But again, it’s so easy to do this. You just do it online and you can even do a temporary thaw, meaning you don’t have to go back and refreeze it. You can say, hey, unfreeze my report for a period of one week, whatever the options are. So that’s just good to know. 

Now, did you know that you may want to freeze the credit of your kids? Because basically as you know, when they’re born, you’re issued a social security number. And apparently this is a growing area of fraud because people aren’t usually monitoring their kid’s social security number because they’re not actively opening things, right? 

And so again, you can do this as well. Now, it’s not as easy for kids. There’s a lot more paperwork involved and you’ve got to send stuff, you can’t do it online like adults. So actually I use a service called Credit Parent and I will link it in the show notes. I do have an affiliate relationship with them, I think it’s WealthyMomMD.com/creditparent, all one word. 

If you want to do it yourself, that’s obviously completely free. But you can do it online with Credit Parent. They somehow have relationships with these companies and so you are able to upload things. And it’s a pretty minor fee, honestly. And so for me, it was way worth the fee for the convenience of letting them handle it and not have to print out forms and fill them out and send it in the mail and wondering if I have a postage stamp and all that kind of stuff. So I’ve done that for Jack. 

Now, for any of these credit report freezes where a pin is issued, although I’ve heard that that’s changed. But when I initially froze my credit reports, they gave me a pin and it’s a pin that you really can’t lose. And so, again, that secure note that I use on 1Password, that is a really great place to put sensitive information like that, like credit report pins or just any sort of maybe backup passwords and backup codes, I’ll talk about that in a second. 

And so actually, recently I realized I didn’t know where Jack’s information was. We recently reorganized all of our files and thankfully I found them and I scanned them and it’s all good now, but there was definitely a brief period of panic where I thought I lost that information. 

Okay, so I forgot to mention, now, besides having secure passwords that are not guessable, please do not use your name at all, you’re maiden name. Don’t use your birthday. Don’t use your kid’s birthdays. That’s just so common and so easy to guess. 

Any account that offers two factor authentication, I just recommend you do this, especially for your financial accounts. Now, what is two factor authentication? It basically means that the password isn’t sufficient, you also have to authenticate another way. And all of you must have experienced this in one form or another. Sometimes it’s a new code via text message. A lot of banks already do this, like Chase, for example, makes me do this every once in a while. 

So that’s a pretty common thing, or they’ll send you a code via email. And sort of a more advanced level is using a code generator where a new six digit code or, yeah, I think six digit code is generated every 30 seconds. And so if a high risk account gives me the option to do that, I will always opt to do that. You have to have a code generator, it’s an app on your phone. There are many of them. 

I use Authy, A-U-T-H-Y, I think Google offers one. They all function the same. You don’t need to use one particular one for one specific type of account. And just looking at my list here of Authy, I have my Amazon account on here, I definitely don’t want people hacking in and ordering stuff on my behalf. I have it for my email. I have it for PayPal. I have it for 1Password, obviously my password manager. I have it for Facebook and Instagram. Definitely do that. 

You may have also heard of passkeys and that’s supposed to be even more secure than a password. It’s basically tied to the device that you’re in. So you actually don’t need to have a login. When I first heard about this, I’m like, how is that more secure if I don’t have to provide any sort of login, I just click login with a passkey? 

I haven’t really jumped on the wagon with passkeys mainly because I don’t feel like I know enough about it, but apparently it is more secure and maybe the future of passwords, because it’s just, as you know, super annoying to have all these passwords and they keep making you change it every once in a while, et cetera. And so I look forward to having an easier time with passwords. 

Speaking of passwords, I have a cold wallet or hard wallet for my crypto. And what that means is that I actually own my cryptocurrency. I own Bitcoin and a little bit of Ethereum, and I use something called the nano ledger. And it’s like a 26 word key that I have to enter. And I will tell you, I’m terrified that I’m going to lose it because if I lose it, I literally can not get into my account, there is no way. 

And so I have hid the 26 word passcode in multiple places online and physically, because again, I’m terrified of losing it. So that’s really the problem with having secure passwords, it’s like, what if you forget, right? And there are a lot of easy ways to recover things, right? But there are certain things that will just be much harder if you can’t, if you lose your ability to do two factor authentication. So that’s another thing about two factor authentication that might be annoying. 

Now, I think it goes to show, or it’s pretty obvious that the more layers of security you have, the better you are protected, but it also is a bit more annoying, right? And so you have to decide if the trade-off is worth it for you. I think it is because the consequences of having these accounts broken into are very high, right? 

And so let’s say if for some reason you lose your phone and you don’t have that authentication software. Now, whenever I change phones, this hasn’t been a problem because I’m able to just transfer my phone, as if it was the same phone onto a new device. And so my Authy keys have always crossed over. But you know, there is a backup password for Authy if you for some reason can’t get in. And so you have to remember that, like where you store that. 

There are backup codes for all of the accounts that you put on Authy. That’s just the one that I use, the code generator. You don’t have to use Authy, you can use some other programs out there. And so I have a list of backup codes for all these accounts that use two-factor authentication and I have them saved in 1Password.  

And 1Password also has a very secure password. And so again, when I talk to my clients inside of my money program, Money For Women Physicians, it can feel overwhelming because there are so many ways or so many layers of online security. And so one of my favorite mottos for all things is start simple, get fancy later. And so if you haven’t been doing any of the things I’ve been talking about, first, it’s okay. And let’s get started. 

And so if this is brand new to you, the first thing I would do is just get a password manager. And so again, I recommend 1Password over LastPass. And then the next question is, well, do I have to log into all my accounts to transfer them? The answer is no, I would spend an hour and log into your financial accounts and save them in 1Password. And you will change the passwords obviously, because you probably haven’t changed in a long time, unless they force you to. 

And then otherwise, when you go to some other website that you log in, when you go to a website, it’ll prompt you, assuming that you have the web browser extension, I use Google Chrome, it’ll basically prompt you to save it. And so that’s when you save it. I don’t think it’s a good use of your time to try to sit down in one fell swoop and try to find everything. But again, I think it is worth doing your high risk accounts. So financial accounts and social media. 

Now, if you’re an online business owner and have a business Facebook account, you definitely want two factor authentication for Facebook. You definitely don’t want your ads account broken into. Now, even if you’ve done everything I tell you, and there are even more ways to secure accounts, which are probably just things that none of you want to do because it is really annoying, it doesn’t mean that your account can’t be broken into. 

That’s one of the things about asset protection, that sort of general umbrella term I use for things like insurance and includes online security is like, you can have all the things and there are no guarantees, but it increases your chances dramatically that nothing bad will happen, right? 

So again, the first thing I would do if this is all new to you is to get a password manager. And then I would either get Aura or DeleteMe. I’m trying to like, I have to actually decide if I really need both or not. Aura I’ve had for less time and so I haven’t decided to get rid of DeleteMe. But if you’re looking to remove your information, I think Aura is probably the way to go since it does it all for you. That’s A-U-R-A. And so I do have an affiliate link, that’s WealthyMomMD.com/aura. We will link all these in the show notes and that’d be a great way to just kind of do it all at once. 

Aura apparently does offer a password manager. I just don’t use it since I already have 1Password. And I don’t really have an opinion about it, I haven’t looked into it because that wasn’t sort of my primary reason for getting it. But yeah, Aura does offer a lot of that stuff. They offer antivirus software for your computers, VPN, passwords, data broker removal, I’m just looking at it right now, and monitor your credit score as well. 

Oh, and I’m looking at it now. It also provides spam blockers for your phone, which is super fun. And so that’s just really nice because I hate getting spam messages, whether they are calling me or texting me. 

And finally consider freezing your credit reports with the major agencies that I mentioned and doing it for your kids. Oh, and the last thing that I almost forgot to say is that filing taxes, now the IRS, you can actually request a pin, a secure pin so that no one else, but you can file. 

Now, you probably have heard of people filing tax returns using your social security number, and so a pin will prevent that. A few years ago, it was experimental and you had to live in certain states, but now everybody can get one. And so that is definitely something that I would recommend. 

I haven’t done it yet. I have to email my CPA because I just want to make sure if I have to do it differently since they file taxes for me. But I’m sure it’s fine, I just want to let them know before they try to file and can’t file on my behalf. 

Okay, I hope you learned a lot. I hope you’re going to do some things I mentioned. I’ll talk to you next week. 

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