Rick’s Awesome Blog

Working for a company like CCBill gives me perspective on something that I hope to never have happen to me. Identity theft. I usually talk to at least a few people every day who are claiming that their credit card has been stolen. Some of these people don’t even realized it’s happened for over a year after it happens. Most of these unauthorized charges could have been prevented if the person had just checked their credit card statement more often. This makes me realize that I need to check my statement more often. Well, I’m lazy like everyone else and I often don’t think to check my statement. Hence, a new project idea was born.

Most banks or credit card companies have some feature where they will notify you if they see suspicious activity on your account. It’s obviously not always available and if it is, it’s not foolproof. I was thinking today that I should be able to write a script to check my bank account daily. This script would send me an e-mail alert or text message alert if it sees suspicious activity. I think to start out “suspicious” will equate to a sum of money over a certain amount. Eventually it could have complicated algorithms programmed in to determine if something is in my normal spending habits. Things like gas and food under certain amounts of money would be alright, whereas movies and internet subscriptions of any dollar amount would be flagged.

Also, on the topic of security I found a few websites that describe ways to secure Wordpress. I’ll have to go through these tonight to beef up my security. Here are the links:

Wordpress security plugins

Wordpress security tips