7 Personal Details You Should Never Divulge Online

What do the following have in common?
- The name of your favorite movie
- Concert tickets or sporting event passes with a barcode
- Your high school
- Your mother’s maiden name
- The name of your best friend in high school
- Your full birthdate, including the year
- The street address of your childhood home
Basically, any of the answers above can be used to answer common security questions that would allow cyber thieves to gain access to an online banking or credit card account. They can be used to reset your password. That’s why you should never post these details publicly on a social media account. Even the name of a beloved pet or school mascot can be fair game.
Related: Think You’ve Been Hacked? 10 Tips to Protect Yourself Now
We already know not to post our vacation plans, where we are meeting friends for drinks or dinner, or where our children go to school. But we should be aware that information we post on our social media accounts can be used by others to profile and target us.
This is especially important when you consider that Facebook users admit that as much as 7 percent of their Friend lists, which can easily number 200 or more, are people they’ve never met in person. If you share your address and phone number on Facebook with Friends only, make sure all of your contacts are people you know; otherwise cut them from your list or relegate them to Acquaintance status.
Even if you don’t have a profile on Facebook, chances are your spouse, co-worker, or teenager does. According to the Pew Research Center, half of Internet users who do not use Facebook themselves live with someone who does. Make sure they’re not giving out your personal information too.
GOP Tax Cuts Getting Less Popular, Poll Finds
Friday marked the six-month anniversary of President Trump’s signing the Republican tax overhaul into law, and public opinion of the law is moving in the wrong direction for the GOP. A Monmouth University survey conducted earlier this month found that 34 percent of the public approves of the tax reform passed by Republicans late last year, while 41 percent disapprove. Approval has fallen by 6 points since late April and disapproval has slipped 3 points. The percentage of people who aren’t sure how they feel about the plan has risen from 16 percent in April to 24 percent this month.
Other findings from the poll of 806 U.S. adults:
- 19 percent approve of the job Congress is doing; 67 percent disapprove
- 40 percent say the country is heading in the right direction, up from 33 percent in April
- Democrats hold a 7-point edge in a generic House ballot
Special Tax Break Zones Defined for All 50 States

The U.S. Treasury has approved the final group of opportunity zones, which offer tax incentives for investments made in low-income areas. The zones were created by the tax law signed in December.
Bill Lucia of Route Fifty has some details: “Treasury says that nearly 35 million people live in the designated zones and that census tracts in the zones have an average poverty rate of about 32 percent based on figures from 2011 to 2015, compared to a rate of 17 percent for the average U.S. census tract.”
Click here to explore the dynamic map of the zones on the U.S. Treasury website.
Map of the Day: Affordable Care Act Premiums Since 2014
Axios breaks down how monthly premiums on benchmark Affordable Care Act policies have risen state by state since 2014. The average increase: $481.
Obamacare Repeal Would Lead to 17.1 Million More Uninsured in 2019: Study

A new analysis by the Urban Institute finds that if the Affordable Care Act were eliminated entirely, the number of uninsured would rise by 17.1 million — or 50 percent — in 2019. The study also found that federal spending would be reduced by almost $147 billion next year if the ACA were fully repealed.
Your Tax Dollars at Work

Mick Mulvaney has been running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since last November, and by all accounts the South Carolina conservative is none too happy with the agency charged with protecting citizens from fraud in the financial industry. The Hill recently wrote up “five ways Mulvaney is cracking down on his own agency,” and they include dropping cases against payday lenders, dismissing three advisory boards and an effort to rebrand the operation as the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection — a move critics say is intended to deemphasize the consumer part of the agency’s mission.
Mulvaney recently scored a small victory on the last point, changing the sign in the agency’s building to the new initials. “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau does not exist,” Mulvaney told Congress in April, and now he’s proven the point, at least when it comes to the sign in his lobby (h/t to Vox and thanks to Alan Zibel of Public Citizen for the photo, via Twitter).