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.
Small Business Owners Say They’re Raising Worker Pay
A record percentage of small business owners say they are raising pay for their workers, according to the latest monthly jobs report from the National Federation of Independent Business, based on a survey of 10,000 of the group’s members. A seasonally adjusted net 35 percent of small businesses say they are increasing compensation. “They are increasing compensation at record levels and are continuing to hire,” NFIB President and CEO Juanita Duggan said in a statement accompanying the report. “Post tax reform, concerns about taxes and regulations are taking a backseat to their worries over filling open positions and finding qualified candidates.”
The US Is Running Short on More Than 200 Drugs
The U.S. is officially running short on 202 drugs, including some medical staples like epinephrine, morphine and saline solution. “The medications most vulnerable to running short have a few things in common: They are generic, high-volume, and low-margin for their makers—not the cutting-edge specialty drugs that pad pharmaceutical companies’ bottom lines,” Fortune’s Erika Fry reports. “Companies have little incentive to make the workhorse drugs we use most.” And much of the problem — “The situation is an emergency waiting to be a disaster,” one pharmacist says — can be tied to one company: Pfizer. Read the full story here.
Chart of the Day: Could You Handle a Sudden $400 Expense?
More Americans say they are living comfortably or at least “doing okay” financially, according to the Federal Reserve’s Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2017. At the same time, four in 10 adults say that, if faced with an unexpected expense of $400, they would not be able to cover it or would cover it by selling something or borrowing money. That represents an improvement from 2013, when half of all adults said they would have trouble handling such an expense, but suggests that many Americans are still close to the edge when it comes to their personal finances.
Kevin Brady Introduces Welfare Reform Bill
The Tax Policy Center’s Daily Deduction reports that Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), chair of the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday introduced The Jobs and Opportunity with Benefits and Services (JOBS) for Success Act (H.R. 5861). “The bill would rename the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and target benefits to the lowest-income households. Although the House GOP leadership promised to include an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit as part of an upcoming welfare reform bill, this measure does not appear to include any EITC provisions.” The committee will mark up the bill on Wednesday.