Protecting Against Identity Theft: Vary

Rule #2: Vary the Information You Divulge

The principle of storing the financial documents of various accounts separate to minimize damage is most effective when separate accounts actually have varied personal information. No, I’m not talking about using a different name and birth date. How many of us use the same username and password for everything? And the same security questions and answers?

In order to protect our accounts, we should be varying the information we use for each one. This way, even if someone knows how to break into our credit card account, he or she would have an extremely hard time accessing another account without extra information.