May 23, 2016

Banking security sucks – protect your money!

Sarah Jeong’s experience with someone getting hold of her account and routing numbers confirms that I’m not paranoid about bank accounts. I’m exactly worried enough.

We have to give out our routing and account numbers to receive payments but, as her experience shows us, money can be withdrawn that way, too, without any authentication or verification required.

Fifteen years ago, before there was actual proof or anecdotes that giving out my account information for deposits was a problem, Dad asked me for them both so he could deposit some cash for me. That in and of itself wasn’t an issue, but it did raise a question mark in my mind.

The bank assured me that my account and routing numbers could only be used by non-accountholders for deposits but they didn’t back up any of those assurances with facts. It was a very “trust me” moment. (Needless to say, I don’t.)

How I protect my money

That left me with an uneasiness that never went away. When I started simplifying all my bank accounts, after the wonderful days of 5% interest yore were a distant memory, I still opened 2 extra accounts.

We have a joint checking account where all our money gets funneled. I keep one month of expenses there. The cash that I need easy access to goes into a nearby savings account, the cash that doesn’t need to stay liquid, is  immediately transferred to be invested or into the Super Secret Locked Up Bank Account.

We have a second checking account for the real estate investment property: income is auto deposited by the property manager and the expenses are automatically paid every month. There’s not much left at the end of each month, but there’s some. That overage is swept into a savings account too.

This way, if anyone gets the account and routing numbers of either checking account and manages to finagle a withdrawal, I’d be out a month of cash and Really Annoyed but at least the damage should end there.

:: Do you worry about bank security? How’s your banking set up? 

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May 16, 2016

The lost iPhone lesson

I found a dime in the couch cushions, which never happens by the way, and not ten minutes later, PiC stole my thunder with his goof.

The man is practically perfect in every way but he does have the occasional humanizing flaw, and this particular one happens to be the kind that drives me right up, over, down the wall again.

He misplaces things.

It’s always something important: wallet, credit card, sunglasses. (And he likes his sunglasses so of course they’re nice ones.)

This time it was his iPhone – he had it when he went to run a last minute errand in the evening. He didn’t have it when we were clearing up for the night.

!!!

After we both tore the place apart looking for it, he realized the last time he remembered having it in his hand was at the store. And remembered setting it down and thinking DO NOT FORGET THIS. For my part, I knew he took the phone and could not for the life of me recall seeing it in his hand when he returned. I knew that didn’t mean he didn’t bring it back but, well, the chances are ever not in our favor in these things.

Don’t Panic! (oh, we panicked)

For us, the three most important things about our phones are the pictures we take on them (thousands!), access to personal data, and the cost of replacing the handset (hundreds!)

The first problem was covered, mostly. Both our phones are set up to back-up to a server. I hate that his phone only runs the back-up when it’s plugged in to charge. It makes a certain kind of battery life saving sense but it’s a crappy feature because if it went missing during the day before being plugged in to charge for the night, we’d lose a day of photos. Really cute family photos, as it happens.

The second problem had me in a silent tizzy. See, after a bit of research, the Internet confirmed my fears. If your phone is picked up or stolen by a scumbag, the best case scenario there is they wipe the phone and sell it. The NOT best scenario is that the scumbag is an enterprising individual and uses the power of existing hacks to hack the phone with the data intact. That means PiC’s emails and various apps would be as unto a Giant Buffet of personal information for the entrepreneurial jerkbutt.

I sent PiC on a mission to change all his passwords for his emails, at least, and then we’d figure out the rest of the apps and access thereof.

The third problem was bubbling away in the back of my mind, not least because I still haven’t replaced my handset yet: $$$$. Unprepared as I am to pay $400-600 for a new smartphone (even though, yes, I do a lot of work on it), I am less prepared to spend double that for two new phones. There was an almost unfair amount of grumpiness in my belly as I tried to digest this grotesque bill.

What we should have done before losing the iPhone

Now, if you’re smart or self aware, you can take steps to protect yourself before losing your iPhone that will help you out if the unhappy event occurs. I do most of our technology set-up but was chagrined to realize that this was something I’d neglected and he couldn’t remember if he had done it.

Know your security features and, as my Filipino mama would say, turn them things on! Go to your Settings, iCloud, and Find my iPhone. Also, turn on “Send last location” – if your phone is on the last drops of battery life, it’ll send its location at that time before it dies.

I’m being very specific to iPhone as we go forward because I have an Android and most of this doesn’t apply to users of my ilk.

After we lost the iPhone

We’d turned the place upside and shaken it. No phone. Searched the premises of where it was last seen, no phone. Checked with security to see if anyone had turned it in, no phone.

It was late, and only getting later, so as he considered whether it was worth leaving a note at the presumed location of the loss, I texted his phone with a contact number. I had a feeling that it wasn’t worth doing because as late as it was, no one was going to hunt down security to give them a found object, phone or not. They’d likely not see it til morning, and so we wouldn’t know til the next day whether a Good Samaritan would have handed it over or if it was really missing. But there were a few things that we COULD do.

Use the Find My iPhone feature!  You don’t need the app to check on your phone’s whereabouts, you can check it on a desktop. When you use this Find my iPhone feature, it turns on Activation Lock so that your Apple ID and password would be required to open up the phone. If you can’t quickly track it down safely, turn on Lost Mode. This will remotely lock your phone with a four-digit code, displays a custom message with your phone number on your Lock screen, and keep track of the phone’s location. It also suspends the ability to make payments using Apple Pay, if you use it, until the phone is home safe. Unfortunately PiC hadn’t turned this on, or we might have saved ourselves a lot of trouble.

Make sure you have the ability to brick your phone: Remote Erase. If you’re sure it’s never coming back, my personal recommendation is to brick that sucker. Mind, you should only do this when you’ve given up hope of getting it back because this wipes your phone clean and you won’t be able to track it anymore if you were doing so before. You can, however, restore the device if you do find it again so that’s good news.

Make sure that you know how to remove access to your accounts. Gmail has a handy option to revoke access to your email account to specific devices. One click security protocol, I dig that. If you have other apps, like I have Twitter on my phone, you should be able to log onto those programs / accounts from a desktop and revoke access to the missing device.

Google also reports the last time there was activity on the phone so we knew, for what it was worth, that it had synced to Gmail two hours earlier.

Make sure that your cell phone isn’t the only backup identity verification. While changing his email, PiC’s only option for one of his email addresses, if he didn’t get a security code texted to his potentially compromised phone! was to wait 30 days for a new secondary email address. This is intended to prevent hackers from slicing through your security in a neat 30 minute period, I’m sure, but it was highly frustrating because we hadn’t considered it from the lost the phone angle.

Many programs let you have two options: a backup email address or a phone number. We will be setting up backups to each other’s phones instead of our own so that we’re not up a Crap Creek without a paddle again.

Duh.

The Almost Anticlimactic Conclusion

After the two hours of high drama, trying to find the phone and revoking access to it, our friend wandered into the living room.

“Rev? Did I take your phone?”

…

We’d had a family night and friends were staying over. Forgetting that her phone was still in her purse and mistaking PiC’s phone for her own, she’d pocketed it and gone to bed. We two were talking, distracted, and never saw it happen. It didn’t occur to us for a second that that might have happened. The phone was and had been safe the whole time!

We’re calling this a cheap lesson in the importance of Stop Leaving Your Stuff in Random Places!!! and in securing mobile devices. It’s kinda like the kid who runs away to teach his parents a lesson in appreciating him, only better/worse.

Also I confiscated all phones in the morning to check everyone’s settings to make sure they were properly set up. Now we all have a handy list of what to do if you ever lose your iPhone (for real).

:: Have you ever lost your phone? Do you routinely back up your phone? What’s the most valuable thing about or on your phone?

*Part of Financially Savvy Saturdays on brokeGIRLrich, Disease Called Debt and Frame to Freedom*