While you probably feel good about your understanding of FDIC insurance for your bank deposits, you probably don’t have as good a feeling for money and securities held by your broker. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) put together a nice description of what happens when a brokerage house goes down and what protections are [...]

Under federal law, consumers are entitled to one free credit report a year through government-sanctioned web site AnnualCreditReport.com. But thanks to those catchy commercials, the FreeCreditReport.com address is far better known among many consumers than the government site. In fact, the FreeCreditReport.com service boasts five million members. FreeCreditReport.com is run by Experian and forces users to [...]

Jay Adkisson’s site lists the state protections provided to Qualified plans, IRAs, Roth IRA, homesteads, life insurance and annuities.

The Washington Post has an article about how hackers have started specifically attacking brokerage accounts to use in pump and dump schemes. To protect yourself avoid accessing important accounts from public kiosks. Also anti-spyware has become the must have addition to your computer security suite (check out Adaware and Spybot if you don’t have one). [...]