Linda Artesani shows how QuickBooks Online protects your data and walks through its privacy settings. She covers password best practices, spotting phishing emails, and reporting suspicious messages to spoof@intuit.com. Regular backups, firewalls, and antivirus software round out the security basics.
Chapters
Hi there, Linda Artesani, Artesani Bookkeeping. So it's been, um, this post actually was born out of a question on the forum that I saw that somebody actually had their computer hacked by ransomware and they lost everything including their desktop file. So they no longer had their data file. They had it on their computer, they backed it up to their computer, and now it's gone. So they're going to need to hire somebody to dig through the remnants of what's left and help them with your file. So one of the good reasons about having QuickBooks Online is you don't have to really be concerned about that. That's Intuit's job to protect you. So let's go to their privacy page. So in your company file, you can click on the gear and get to the privacy window. A lot of information on privacy. It's got Intuit's privacy statement. Here and what they do to protect you. And you can go into any of these categories to read the details. Also, a management guide to protect your own business and to protect your own private information. So credit monitoring services, there's a ton of them out there you can sign up for. Some are free. Of course, the old adage, you get what you pay for. But it's always good to have it anyway, either way. What you should do for passwords, maybe username and password best protection. I know I have a dear friend who used to be in information services at Bank of America, and he told me to use a phrase. It's easier to remember and it's long. So you can type in any phrase, I love QuickBooks Online, or I hate QuickBooks Online, and you can do that and put some numbers and maybe a code in. Another thing that is important is if you get emails, I got one the other day from Chase, do have a bank account with Chase and some credit cards and it just made no sense because it wanted me to click on a link to see the fraudulent activity. Well, I've had that happen before where they'd send me an email but this didn't look right, there were some misspellings so that's something you might want to look into. Recognize when it's a suspicious email and website. So one of the things you can do is if you come in here you can You can recognize if it's a fake, and here's the way you can check. You can mouse over any link to see if it's a URL. If it doesn't look legitimate, don't click it. Always best to just make a phone call. If the email has grammatical errors, I see that a lot, or just words spelled incorrectly. If there's attachments, don't click the attachment. That's how this person got attacked with the ransomware. Do not ever give out a Social Security number or important personal information. And it can come from, you know, if it says do you have a relationship with the company, it can come from someone that you do have a relationship with and then it comes in. If you get one of these emails and it looks like it's not quite right, you can email, if it comes from Intuit, email spoof@intuit.com. They answer back and they'll let you know, they'll thank you if it was one or they will let you know it's a legitimate email. I did get one once from Intuit It was from somebody trying to sell me something and it was Intuit and it was a little bit annoying because it was just kind of odd, but it really was when I sent it in. Ways you can protect your computer, of course, backing up your files. You know, just because you use QuickBooks on the web doesn't mean that you shouldn't back up some of your data, maybe your documents, Word documents, contracts, things of that ilk. Firewall, everybody needs firewall on their computer. Antivirus software, again, same thing. Watch out for your pop-up warnings. Only allow certain websites to have the pop-ups. Allow you to safely use the web and then a wireless network, of course, which is why you could never use wireless with your QuickBooks before. How to report an issue, and then of course their privacy policy. So it's just some of the things that you can find that are in your files. So a lot of this stuff, there's a lot of stuff in here, videos, welcome guide. This is all in QuickBooks. It's here. I mean, I know personally a lot of people would rather read a book than go through videos and welcome guide, but most of us are dying out that like to read a book. But, you know, these are things that are in QuickBooks, so you may not even know that they're there. My other favorite is the feedback button. You could tell them what you think about whatever you see that you don't like in the program. Maybe you don't like that the green wheel spins and you're clearly hanging on something. So you can put that in there as well, or maybe you have an idea of something that you'd like to see in a future version of QuickBooks Online. Put that idea in, you never know, you might see it in the future. So that is it in a nutshell. I hope that was helpful. Again, this is Linda Artesani, Artesani Bookkeeping. Please feel free to reach out to me. I'd love to hear your comments, feedback on this blog site, videos, on the videos that I produce, or even feedback on QuickBooks Online or any of the topics that I've had, or maybe a future topic you'd like to hear from. Thank you very much for watching. Bye now.
