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Before yesterdaySecurity

Cleanup on Aisle Six! How to Close Online Accounts for Savings and Security.

How many online accounts do you have? Dozens? Hundreds? You probably have more than you think, and deleting a bunch of them might be the right call.  

You have two good reasons: savings and security. 

Certainly, you have trusted accounts you use all the time, like the one with your bank and a few others with major retailers. Yet you probably have armloads of other accounts on top of those. Within that broader mix, you’ll find accounts for apps, streaming services, online publications, and for retailers where you made one-off purchases years ago. 

Sure, you still access some of them occasionally. Yet there are plenty of other accounts you don’t. And there might be some you’re still paying for too. Closing them down can certainly save you some money. 

Yet there’s a security issue, too. The more online accounts you keep, the greater the exposure you have to data breaches. Each account will have varying degrees of personal and financial information linked to it. And that means each one carries a varying degree of risk if it gets breached. Moreover, some sites and services protect data better than others, which adds another dimension of risk. 

Closing old and particularly risky accounts can decrease the risk of your personal and financial information winding up in the hands of an identity thief.  

And there’s one more reason why you might consider cleaning up your old accounts. Your privacy. Companies hold all kinds of personal information in their databases. If you’re not using an account anymore, why should a company have it? 

With security and savings in mind, McAfee created Online Account Cleanup. It finds and requests the deletion of unused accounts and protects your personal data from data breaches as a result. Monthly scans across your online accounts shows a risk level for each account and helps you decide which ones to delete. 

And now is certainly a good time to trim down those accounts—about half a billion data records were exposed worldwide between 2020 and 2022. And those are the reported figures. Actual figures are arguably higher. 

In all, Online Account Cleanup can help you take charge of your personal and financial information at a time where bad actors prize it so highly. 

How McAfee’s Online Account Cleanup helps put you in charge 

Our Online Account Cleanup lets you view all your accounts tied to your email in one place and helps you decide which ones you want to delete. It assigns a risk level to each of the accounts based on how much personal information is usually shared with each company, as well as past breaches and industry breach potential.  

When you decide to delete an account, it links you to the website in question. From there, it shows you how you can request to have your data deleted from their database. If you’re a McAfee+ Ultimate customer, it can take care of this part for you with a single click.  

Our Online Account Cleanup will continue to run monthly scans to find any new online accounts so you can stay on top of your digital footprint. 

How McAfee’s Online Account Cleanup works 

1) Scan for accounts 

You can scan whichever email address you select. Scanning an email inbox is the best way to see how many companies or organizations have access to your information. Don’t worry, we’re only looking for company email domains, welcome emails, timestamps, and most importantly—spam. 

If you decide to let McAfee help you request data deletion, we’ll keep tabs on the email replies you receive from the companies requesting more information or confirming that your data has been deleted. 

2) Review and delete accounts 

The risk level next to each account is calculated based on how much personal information each company or organization is likely to have access to and the breach potential for the company’s industry. The more important the info, such as credit card, Social Security Number, driver’s license number, the higher the risk. If the organization is in an industry with a low breach potential, like government agencies, the risk will be lower. Keep in mind, risk level doesn’t mean your specific account is more or less susceptible to getting hacked.  

For the accounts you choose to delete, we’ll provide you with instructions on how to send a deletion request and link you to the company’s website. Or if you’re using McAfee+ Ultimate, we’ll send the request for you with a single click.  

3) Recurring monitoring 

We’ll scan each month to keep you up to date on new accounts. When combined with other McAfee features like identity monitoring, transaction monitoring, and Personal Data Cleanup, plus credit monitoring and a VPN, you’ll have protection in breadth and depth. You’ll find features like these across our McAfee+ plans, which keep your privacy and identity more secure. 

See for yourself. Take a quick tour of McAfee’s Online Account Cleanup. 

Questions about your personal data? We have answers. 

Are companies required to delete my personal data? 

Not all companies are required to delete your data. It depends on the privacy laws of the country or region in which you live. For example, if you’re a resident of California or the European Union, companies are required to delete your data upon request because privacy laws require them to do so (subject to certain exceptions). 

How fast will my data be deleted after sending a request? 

Sometimes, deleting your personal data is not a one-click process. In other cases, companies will reach out to you to further verify your identity or ask for additional information. To make the deletion process more comfortable, you can view and reply to the companies directly from your McAfee Protection Center. We don’t collect any of these email messages. Your email messages remain in your own inbox. 

Should I scan my primary email address or an email I use for spam? 

We recommend using the email address that’s linked to your online accounts that use your credit card, address, or other sensitive information. These accounts are at higher risk than accounts that only have your email tied to them. 

Cleaning up online accounts for savings and security 

Saving money feels great. Especially when you shut down an online subscription you’re no longer using.  

But there’s more to deleting old accounts than that. It can protect you from data breaches. Which, if you think about it, is a strong financial move as well. Consider how costly identity theft can be in terms of time and money. 

Our new Online Account Cleanup can help you delete unused and risky accounts—and do it in minutes instead of the hours it used to take. It’s available now as part of our McAfee+ plans. 

The post Cleanup on Aisle Six! How to Close Online Accounts for Savings and Security. appeared first on McAfee Blog.

Protecting Your Parents from Scams with Our New Family Plans

As people get into their 70s, they stand to lose more to fraud than any other age group—which makes a strong case for protecting the older people in our lives. 

If you’re looking to protect them online, you have several ways to go about it. Our new McAfee+ Family plans are one way, where two adults and four children get personalized online protection that they can set up and manage on their own. With your McAfee+ Family plan  a simple invitation, you can rest easy that they’re protected against online scams and other threats. 

And threats certainly face us all, and hit older adults hardest. 

In the following table courtesy of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), you can see the risks that adults faced in 2022. While younger victims reported fraud loss at a higher rate, their median losses were typically smaller than the losses of older adults. By the time victims reach their 70s and 80s, the reporting rate dropped, yet the median losses made a significant leap. 

Note that these are reported cases of fraud, and those reported to the FTC. In other words, this represents just a slice of the fraud that occurred in 2022.  

Moreover, as we’ve shared before in articles about elder scams, older adults may be less willing or able to report a scam. The reasons vary. They may not know how they were scammed or they may feel shamed by being scammed—all of which can lead to underreporting. Moreover, not every scam report includes an age range, which leads to further underreporting. 

Yet the case is clear. Scams pose a significant threat to older adults. 

Which online scams are targeting grandparents and older adults? 

Looking further into the FTC data, older adults in the U.S. lost more than $1.6 billion to scams in 2022 across four primary categories: 

  • Imposter scams – As the name implies, these involve scammers masquerading as legitimate businesses, government agencies, or even friends and family members. Regardless of the guise, the scammers want the same thing—to steal money and personal information from the victim. To do so, scammers may make phony threats as they pose as credit card agents or tax collectors, or they may pretend to be a friend or grandchild in urgent financial need. In these cases, email and social media account for primary contact methods, and payments usually take the form money orders and gift cards as losses from them are difficult to recover. 
  • Online shopping scams – These scams take in victims of all ages. Search and social media ads lead victims to bogus websites that sell unique or hard-to-get items, often at a greatly reduced cost. However, once the scammers receive payment, they’ll either deliver low-quality knockoff goods or no goods at all. In the case of counterfeit goods, these scams may be a front for illegal activity and may exploit child labor as well. In the case of non-delivery, organized cybercrime groups often run these scams, operating them much in the same way a legitimate business sells its goods—with marketing teams, web developers, and processes for receiving payment. In short, they can look and act rather sophisticated. 
  • Sweepstakes scams – Tough to win a sweepstakes that you never entered. But that won’t stop scammers from saying you have. Victims will get an email or a direct message in social media saying that they’ve won a prize and that all they need to do it claim it. This is where the scammer will ask the victim to provide something, like personal information because the scammer needs it determine their “eligibility”, or their bank account routing information so that the scammer can “send the winnings.” In some cases, they may outright ask victims for money, like a processing fee or a payout for taxes on the (bogus) winnings. 
  • Tech support scams – These scams target older adults several ways, such as through links from unsolicited emails, pop-up ads from risky sites, or by spammy phone calls and texts. Here, the scammer will pose as tech support from a known and reputable brand and inform the victim that they have an urgent issue with their computer or device. While the device is actually in fine working order, the scammer offers to “fix” it for a fee. With permission to fix the device given, the scammer either does nothing or, more maliciously, installs malware like adware or spyware on the otherwise healthy device. 

Helping the grandparents and older adults in your life avoid online scams. 

So many scams fail to pass the sniff test. The moment you scrutinize the incredible offer plastered on that ad or question why a so-called tax collector would hound you on social media, something immediately smells fishy. Yet people don’t always catch that whiff. People of all ages. Not just the elders in our lives.  

One way we can help everyone stay safer online is through conversation. The knowledge that comes from a good, ongoing conversation about life online provides them with one pillar of protection. Talking about how they spend their time online and the types of scams that are out there arms them with the savvy they need to spot a scam. That will help them take that crucial moment when faced with a possible scam, a crucial moment to consider if that ad, email, or direct message is indeed bogus. 

The second pillar comes from comprehensive online protection. Today’s protection goes far beyond antivirus. It protects devices the privacy and the identity of the people using them. In the case of our McAfee+ Family plans, they protect up to six people from viruses, credit card fraud, and identity theft with tailored guidance as they do what they do online. With an elder on your family plan, you can see which devices they’ve installed protection on, so you’ll know they’re protected.  

More specific to some of the scams we talked about, it can help block older adults from accessing messages. Further, it can help prevent scam calls and texts in the first place. Personal Data Cleanup spots and removes their personal info from risky data broker sites that spammers use to find victims. And if their personal information has been compromised, our identity monitoring alerts them if their data is found on the dark web, an average of 10 months ahead of similar services—and get expert guidance about what to do next.​ Our identity theft protection and recovery service  identity and credit if the unexpected happens to them. 

Adding a parent to your family plan. 

Adding someone to your McAfee+ Family plan is practically as simple as typing in an email address.  

Think of it as sending an invitation, one where everyone gets their own personalized protection with their own unique login. This way, each member of the family can set up and manage their own protection for their identity, privacy, computers, and phones.  

With this invitation, they’ll see that it comes from you and that all they need to do to start their protection is to click the link—no extra charges or fees. They’re simply part of your plan now.

From there, they can download their protection, set up their devices, and consult their McAfee Protection Score to see how secure they are. Then simple instructions make it easy to set up and fix gaps to improve their online security so that they’re safer still. 

In all, it’s a highly straightforward process, for you and members of your family. 

Protect your family from scams online with the right plan in place. 

Spending any time online calls for online protection, no matter what age you are. While threats may look different across different age groups, every family member faces them. Another thing everyone has in common is that every family member can protect themselves from threats, far more thoroughly now than before. Comprehensive online protection has evolved far beyond antivirus. It protects the person, which is important because that’s who scammers target. They target people, so they can invade their privacy, steal their personal information, or simply rip them off.  

Put plainly, knowing what today’s scams look like and using comprehensive online protection offer a one-two punch in the defense against online scams. You have several options to get it for the older adults in your life, our new McAfee+ Family plans being one of them. Whichever route you take, putting your family’s protection plan in place will absolutely reduce the chances of someone you love getting stung by a scam. 

The post Protecting Your Parents from Scams with Our New Family Plans appeared first on McAfee Blog.

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