WEST DES MOINES — Many of us may want to rely on the people we bank with or the retailers we shop at to make sure we don’t get hacked. While trustworthy places do offer helpful tools to keep your banking info safe, an expert Local 5 spoke with Wednesday said it’s up to you to use the right tools and stay away from ones that might give you a false sense of security.
Patrick Dix, Vice President of Strategic Alliances at SHAZAM, knows the importance of having a trustworthy network to handle your finances.
“Over a year, we’re doing about 1.3 billion transactions.”
But Dix said you can’t ignore your own role in personal data protection.
“We really have become way too dependent on someone else to handle our cybersecurity.”
That’s why he’s got several tips to keeping your banking data safe.
First, opt in for your bank’s text alerts.
“Right away, if you get an alert and you’re not in the store where your card was just used, you really should know that something’s wrong immediately,” said Dix.
Second, it’s important to check your statements, just in case a fraudulent charge slips through the cracks of your bank’s flagging system.
“I would say daily or weekly you need to log onto that mobile app, you need to look and just glance through it and make sure yep this looks like something that I’ve done.”
Lastly, while some wallets boast claims of blocking frequencies used to skim your card without it leaving your wallet, Dix says, don’t count on it.
“The idea that someone would come up to you and steal that signal that doesn’t go very far, it doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
Patrick Dix also recommends that you “geo-fence” your card. That means if you only use your card in a certain country or even a certain city, you can ask your financial institution to block all transactions outside that zone.