7 Personal Details You Should Never Divulge Online

7 Personal Details You Should Never Divulge Online

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By Suelain Moy

What do the following have in common?

  1. The name of your favorite movie
  2. Concert tickets or sporting event passes with a barcode
  3. Your high school
  4. Your mother’s maiden name
  5. The name of your best friend in high school
  6. Your full birthdate, including the year
  7. The street address of your childhood home

Basically, any of the answers above can be used to answer common security questions that would allow cyber thieves to gain access to an online banking or credit card account. They can be used to reset your password. That’s why you should never post these details publicly on a social media account. Even the name of a beloved pet or school mascot can be fair game.

Related: Think You’ve Been Hacked? 10 Tips to Protect Yourself Now

We already know not to post our vacation plans, where we are meeting friends for drinks or dinner, or where our children go to school. But we should be aware that information we post on our social media accounts can be used by others to profile and target us.

This is especially important when you consider that Facebook users admit that as much as 7 percent of their Friend lists, which can easily number 200 or more, are people they’ve never met in person. If you share your address and phone number on Facebook with Friends only, make sure all of your contacts are people you know; otherwise cut them from your list or relegate them to Acquaintance status.

Even if you don’t have a profile on Facebook, chances are your spouse, co-worker, or teenager does. According to the Pew Research Center, half of Internet users who do not use Facebook themselves live with someone who does. Make sure they’re not giving out your personal information too.

Chart of the Day: Boosting Corporate Tax Revenues

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By The Fiscal Times Staff

The leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination have all proposed increasing taxes on corporations, including raising income tax rates to levels ranging from 25% to 35%, up from the current 21% imposed by the Republican tax cuts in 2017. With Bernie Sanders leading the way at $3.9 trillion, here’s how much revenue the higher proposed corporate taxes, along with additional proposed surtaxes and reduced tax breaks, would generate over a decade, according to calculations by the right-leaning Tax Foundation, highlighted Wednesday by Bloomberg News.

Chart of the Day: Discretionary Spending Droops

By The Fiscal Times Staff

The federal government’s total non-defense discretionary spending – which covers everything from education and national parks to veterans’ medical care and low-income housing assistance – equals 3.2% of GDP in 2020, near historic lows going back to 1962, according to an analysis this week from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Chart of the Week: Trump Adds $4.7 Trillion in Debt

By The Fiscal Times Staff

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated this week that President Trump has now signed legislation that will add a total of $4.7 trillion to the national debt between 2017 and 2029. Tax cuts and spending increases account for similar portions of the projected increase, though if the individual tax cuts in the 2017 Republican overhaul are extended beyond their current expiration date at the end of 2025, they would add another $1 trillion in debt through 2029.

Chart of the Day: The Long Decline in Interest Rates

Wall Street slips, Dow posts biggest weekly loss of 2013
Reuters
By The Fiscal Times Staff

Are interest rates destined to move higher, increasing the cost of private and public debt? While many experts believe that higher rates are all but inevitable, historian Paul Schmelzing argues that today’s low-interest environment is consistent with a long-term trend stretching back 600 years.

The chart “shows a clear historical downtrend, with rates falling about 1% every 60 years to near zero today,” says Bloomberg’s Aaron Brown. “Rates do tend to revert to a mean, but that mean seems to be declining.”

Chart of the Day: Drug Price Plans Compared

By The Fiscal Times Staff

Lawmakers are considering three separate bills that are intended to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. Here’s an overview of the proposals, from a series of charts produced by the Kaiser Family Foundation this week. An interesting detail highlighted in another chart: 88% of voters – including 92% of Democrats and 85% of Republicans – want to give the government the power to negotiate prices with drug companies.