Protect your accounts, identity and assets.

Accounts and passwords

Protect the accounts that can reset all your other accounts.

• Use a password manager, with a different password for every account.
• Turn on passkeys or an authenticator app for email, banking, brokerage and exchange accounts, instead of text-message codes.
• Secure your primary email account first. Whoever controls it can reset almost everything else.

• Cyber security practices

Your phone number

Ask your mobile carrier for an account PIN and a number-lock or port-out protection. Together they make a SIM swap much harder. A SIM swap is when someone moves your number to their phone and receives your codes, so prefer app or passkey sign-in over text-message codes too.

• Cyber security practices

Credit and identity

These free steps make it much harder to open credit or file a tax return in your name.

• Freeze your credit at Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. A freeze is free.
• Check your credit reports at AnnualCreditReport.com.
• Get an IRS Identity Protection PIN.
• Create your my Social Security account before someone else does.

• Identity, credit and free government tools

Requests to move money

Verify any request to send money or change payment instructions by calling a number you already have. Don't use the contact details in the message. Urgency and secrecy are warning signs.

• Social engineering and fraud

Digital assets

Never share a seed phrase, private key or recovery material. Check every destination address on the signing device. Send a small test transaction before a large one.

• Onchain and crypto security

Money you may have forgotten

States hold billions of dollars in unclaimed property: old bank balances, uncashed checks, deposits and insurance proceeds. Searching is free at MissingMoney.com and on your state's official unclaimed property site.

• Identity, credit and free government tools