7 Reasons You Should Update Your Bank Account Password ASAP
According to a recent survey by GOBankingRates, 17% of Americans have never changed their bank account passwords.
This means the money parked in those accounts could be vulnerable to online thieves. With massive data breaches becoming a common trend, phishing scams and fraud schemes running rampant online, and password cracking software becoming more sophisticated, it’s important to stay up to date on securing your financial accounts.
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If you haven’t changed your bank account password, here are seven reasons to do it today.
You Use the Same Password for Other Accounts
Most people have been guilty of this. With so many accounts moving online, it’s easy to use the same password over and over again. But this is a mistake that hackers want you to make, especially with your financial accounts.
Using the same password for multiple accounts puts you at more risk. If there is a data breach for any of your online accounts, hackers now have access to your password for that account. The first thing they will do is attempt to use this same username/password combo for multiple types of accounts, including your bank account.
If you have no other protections in place, they can quickly drain your accounts, leaving you with no money and no recourse. Always use unique passwords for each online account.
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Be Real — It’s Been a While
While you don’t necessarily need to change your password every month, if you haven’t changed your bank account password in a few years, it might be time to mix it up. With data breaches across major companies, it is likely that an old password of yours might have been compromised. This can be quickly remedied with a password change for each of your financial accounts.
A good rule of thumb is to update your password every two years. Research from the Federal Trade Commission suggests that mandatory password changes aren’t as effective as just setting a strong password in the first place. But changing your password every few years can help keep your passwords protected from data breaches.
Your Password Is Saved In Your Browser — and Is Easier To Access
If you use any modern browser, you most likely have passwords saved in the browser. While this is a convenient way to store passwords for multiple sites and apps, it can make hacking into your bank account much easier.
If you happen to lose your phone or laptop, hackers simply need to find out your computer login to access your stored browser passwords. This can make any account you’ve saved passwords for vulnerable.
For bank accounts, it’s important to change the password, and do not save it anywhere. Keeping financial accounts off your browser saved password list is a smart way to lower your risk of being hacked.
Hackers Might Already Have Your Password
Unfortunately, data breaches have been happening on a massive scale — 3 billion users on Yahoo in 2017, 700 million users on LinkedIn in 2021 and 500 million users leaked from Facebook in 2019. Chances are your passwords are available online.
If this is the case, it could be only a matter of time until your accounts are accessed. This means you should absolutely change your financial account passwords if you haven’t recently. And if you ever get an email from a website or online platform you use that suggests your email address or password have been compromised, change all of your passwords immediately.
You’ve Probably Used a Public Network
Have you ever joined a Wi-Fi network at a hotel, store or any other public location? These networks may allow bad actors to access your device in an attempt to hack into your phone or laptop.
And if you’ve ever tried joining a network that was labeled “open” or “unsecured”, this may further put you at risk. A good way to avoid being compromised is to simply not join public Wi-Fi networks. But if you have to, never log into your bank account when on public Wi-Fi.
If you do, change your bank account passwords after accessing them on public Wi-Fi to keep yourself protected.
Your Password Is Too Short
A study by Hive Systems that reviews password security says that hackers can instantly break into accounts with passwords with passwords under six characters in length. And while many online banks do enforce a character minimum of eight characters, this isn’t much safer.
Even with numbers, uppercase and lowercase letters, and symbols, sophisticated hackers can crack your eight-character password in around eight hours. But if you bump up the character length to, say, 11 characters, it would take about 400 years!
If you have a short password for your bank account, one way to instantly secure it is to change it to a longer password.
Your Latest Password Is Almost the Same as Your Old One
According to the FTC, when people change their password, it’s almost always very similar to their old one. WIth mandatory password changes on many accounts, users may get overwhelmed trying to keep up with all the changes and devise a system to remember their password.
This allows hackers to systematically guess your password once they get ahold of one version of it. They can simply add a number or letter to your password and use software to help speed up the process.
If your most recent bank account password change is too similar to your old password, you should change it immediately. And if you’ve used a version of that password anywhere else, you are even more susceptible to being hacked.
Bottom Line
Keeping a short leash on your bank account passwords can help keep your money safe and ensure that bad actors cannot access your funds. You don’t need to change your passwords every month, but it’s important to keep them up to date and create strong ones.
Always keep an eye on your bank account activity, setting alerts for large transactions and making sure no one else has access to your funds. It’s your money, so protect it!
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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: 7 Reasons You Should Update Your Bank Account Password ASAP
