ersonal Financial Cyber Security: Paper Financial Statement Records Are Essential

[jv_coach]

Personal Financial Cyber Security: Paper Financial Statement Records Are Essential

 

 

By Richard Shaw

Thursday, December 25, 2014 1:16 AM EST

Views: 9292

 

Don't save a tree -- save your savings.  Saving a tree by going paperless is nice, but protecting your financial future is more important.

Sony/North Korea adds another warning sign of your need to do something very simple to avoid a potential financial disaster.  Keep paper statements.

Electronic statements from brokerages, banks and other financial firms are convenient, keep things tidy, and "save trees"; but they expose you to potentially devastating economic losses in extreme situations.  Keeping PDF files of your monthly or quarterly statements on your hard drive (and backup) is a good idea; and also receiving statements by mail or keeping paper printouts is an even better idea.

Why?  Because the growing frequency and severity of hacker attacks on US corporations (Sony -SNE) being the most recent example of completely erased databases), and attacks on major retailers and some banks (such as JP Morgan - JPM) foreshadows the possibility someday that who you are, what accounts you own, and what is in those accounts, could be erased, modified or scrambled beyond recognition or reconstruction in a cyber-attack.

Picture the pickle you would be in if you tried to withdraw money from your bank and they said they have no record of you.  Or, what if your broker said their records show completely different securities or number of shares than you know you have?  What if it would all be straightened out eventually, but you did not have enough cash to make it until "eventually" arrives?

Just imagine being on hold on the phone as 1 million clients of your brokerage are all calling trying to get their money or to straighten out the data errors in their records after the attack.  Good luck with that.

You would have a much better chance of getting sorted out successfully, if you had a paper trail of historical statements.  Yes, you could print the PDF files, but what if the nature of the attack wiped out your computer? Or what if you find when you need them, that somehow they were erased by you, or your computer died and the data could not be retrieved?

http://www.talkmarkets.com/content/other/personal-financial-cyber-security-paper-financial-statement-records-are-essential?post=55337&utm_source=outbrain&utm_medium=referral

 

[SKINS]

A good article.