The Internet Age has considerably changed how people bank. You no longer have to go to a physical bank and stand in line to wait for a teller; these days, many folks do all their financial transactions from a home computer, while mobile banking with handheld devices is the new standard. Yet all that personal and financial information is also exposed to a new kind of criminal, the identity thief. BankShout wants you to be secure in your banking, so here are some tips to help keep your information safe, including:

• Keeping accurate records
• Not sharing personal information
• Proper disposal of old statements, checks, and bank cards
• Monitoring your accounts

Done properly, these careful steps will not take up too much of your time, but will help you successfully defend your money and personal information from cyber-criminals.

One of the first and foremost ways of protecting yourself is simply by knowing what you have in your accounts, as well as where those accounts are. Keeping accurate records is crucial to your ability to recognize fraud or theft if they happen. As I mentioned in previous BankShout posts, however, balancing a checkbook is somewhat of a lost art. The prevalence of debit card transactions and the hurried pace of our society seems to have eclipsed the basic need to balance accounts. Don’t fall into that trap; the only way to really know if someone is accessing your accounts is to know exactly how much is in those accounts in the first place. (For those who have never learned how to keep a register and balance a checkbook, I’ll detail the technique for you in a later post.)

On its website, M&T Bank reminds customers about not sharing personal information, including User IDs and passwords, social security numbers and bank account numbers, with others. One of the oldest scams in the book (at least it’s old by Internet standards) is the “phishing” email that asks for your account information. Don’t fall for it. Your bank would never email you–or call you for that matter–to ask you for your account number, although your financial institution may ask for verification when you call them. Know who you are talking with on the phone or emailing at all times.

Next, buy yourself a shredder. Proper disposal of old statements, checks, and bank cards is critical, since thieves don’t just use computers–they also go through trash. M&T reminds people to make sure numbers on old cards in particular are not readable before pitching them.

Finally, the Internet may indeed by a haven for thieves. Yet it is also your ally in monitoring your accounts. You don’t need to become obsessed with looking over your bank statements, but using online access to stay aware of transactions that have cleared is a good rule of thumb. Report any transactions you don’t recognize to your bank. Of course, if you lose your checkbook or debit card, or if your bank statements don’t show the correct address, call your bank immediately.