There are two kinds of fraud alerts.

An initial fraud alert which stays on your credit report for at least 90 days. And An extended fraud alert which stays on your credit report for seven years.

It is so easy to have your Facebook, Gmail, yahoo or Orkut accounts hacked. It is so easy that there are now services offering to do it for free for you for thirty days. We won’t give you a link to the hacking website, but it is real. To limit your risk always use a different password for each account and change them often. An easy way to remember different passwords is to memorize a complex password by using the first letter of each word in a phrase and then adding the number of words in the phrase as the first letter of the password and add a -Y for yahoo, -FB for facebook, etc. Here is an example:

“you are my sunshine my only sunshine” would generate the password for yahoo “7yamsmos-Y”.

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As the new year approaches there will surely be additional diet scams that will be greeting you in your email inboxes. Diet scams are so attractive because people renew their goals to get in shape every year and the scammers give it an extra push to catch them when their defenses are down. Beware of new diet fads. To lose weight you typically have to change your eating habits along with your fitness habits. There are some good programs out there that teach you how to change your habits, motivate you and provide fitness workouts. Things to look out for are super quick programs that don’t require any habit changes, working out, and promise results just from taking a pill. Look for programs without support groups or training. Good luck getting in shaper this year and remember when it comes to emails, “think before clicking a link”.