If you see any accounts that you didn't know about, you may be victim to identity theft.

These reports are also really helpful to understand the positive and negative factors impacting your credit and what you can do to raise it.

Check if your social security number was compromised by the Equifax breach in 2017 here. Over 80 million people were impacted, including myself and my wife, so chances are good yours was too. At this link, scroll down half way and click the red "Am I Impacted?" Button to see.

It is a bit of a hassle to freeze your credit but I think its worth the security. You can do it at each bureau's website in less than an hour. Once they're frozen and you want to apply for new credit, you will need to unfreeze it temporarily for a time period or for a specific lender for each bureau that the lender uses to check your credit report.

More: NerdWallet - How to freeze your credit at each bureau.

More: NerdWallet - Do You Need Identity Theft Protection Services?

No matter how careful you are with your credit card number, it's usually only a matter of time before it gets compromised. Be on the front end and detect it early to freeze it before the criminal racks up too many charges.

If your credit card is compromised, the criminal is spending the credit card company's money. You never actually used your money for that transaction (unless you already paid it off). When a debit card is compromised, the criminal is using your money. It is a lot easier to dispute a credit card transaction versus getting your financial institution to refund your bank account.

More: NerdWallet - Use Your Credit Card

Websites have data breaches all the time. We hear about the big ones on the news, but the small companies get hacked too. Once your email and password are compromised on one website, that same combination can be used anywhere else you used it to login. A criminal may get your login information from a data breach at arandomwebsite.com, then go try it out at all the financial institutions, social media sites, email sites, etc.

If you're not going to listen to this advice, you’re putting yourself at risk, but at least have a unique password for financial websites and email accounts.

Password managers are great for creating strong, unique passwords. I love 1Password's feature to generate a password by specifying the length, number of symbols, number of digits, etc. You can use 1Password Mini to generate a password as you're signing up for a new website on your laptop without skipping a beat!

These are really helpful at remembering all those darn passwords, and they can be helpful in generating new, random, secure passwords.

For your password manager, print off your master password and account key and put it in your safe.

Use a strong password for your master vault password, but not too hard to remember because you need it everytime you want to get a password from your vault.

Yahoo has had 3 massive hacks since 2013 and keeps losing personal data including passwords. Criminals can buy your login information and then go try it somewhere else.

More: iMore - How to Delete Your Yahoo Account.

Many email providers like Gmail allow you to provide a seconary email address and a phone number. These can be used to help you recover your account if it is compromised or if you forget your password. Email is the gateway to resetting your password at most sites, so this is important!

More: Gmail - Setup a Recovery Email and Phone number

Facebook - Setup Trusted Contacts

2 factor authentication allows you to specify an email address, or even better a phone number, and will receive a code every time anyone tries to login to your account. Put the code into the website and continue to login.

This is really important for bank accounts and email accounts where a compromise can mean financial loss.

More: The Verge - How to Setup Two Factor Authentication on All Your Accounts

Not covered above, go to all of your bank accounts, 401k accounts, etc and do the same.

I get 2-4 scam calls a day. Sometimes they want my opinion on a political survey, sometimes they want me to give them enough information to steal my money. I'd prefer them not to be able to contact me, so installing a spam call blocker app seems like a must have!

There are dozens of call blocker websites and they'll tell you if an incoming call is a known scammer. Some will allow you to choose to let those go straight to voicemail too. Set it up to block known scammers, otherwise let it alert you when suspected scammers call.

These apps also usually have a phone number look-up, so you can check if a number you're going to call has been reported by another user as fake.

More: Mr Number - Android

Mr Number - iOS

There are loads of phone numbers that come up as the #1 result on Google for a company's phone number that lead you right to someone trying to take your money. A lot of large online companies like Facebook / Yahoo don't have a phone number (or even a way to easily contact them).

If you're unsure, put the number into Mr. Number's phone number look-up, or Google the phone number and see if others are reporting it as spam. If the number doesn't lead directly to a page on that company's website, it is probably fake.

I can't think of any reason a company would need to call you to get money from you or to provide them more information. The most likely form of contact would be a letter in the mail (if it is a government agency) or possibly email, but be very skeptical of these types of emails.

This includes things like the IRS coming to arrest you for back taxes, Microsoft reporting your computer is infected, and credit or collection agencies claiming you owe money. It may sound obvious, but if they have the right timing, it may sound believable at the time.

Scammers are getting good at mimicking websites and tricking you to visit them then enter your information.

Ask yourself: how did I get to this website? Was it through a Google search, or did a click a link on nbc.com?

https:// encrypts your data over the wire so it is harder to compromise.

You know those interesting stories on your favorite news site lining the sidebar, mixed throughput the article you're reading, and at the end with plenty of suggestions on what to read next? Don't click those!

If something pops up on your computer saying that a virus was found, that you need to pay to continue subscription for something, etc, it is likely not real!

On a computer, hover your mouse over a link and look at the bottom of your browser, it will tell you where the link goes. If the beginning of the URL shows a different URL than the one at the top of your browser (the site you're at), you are going to a link outside of the site.

Advertising is the way most websites make money, and ad sections on sites are everywhere. Although a lot of these advertised articles seem harmless, they have been known to lead to phishing sites that trick you into giving them your data or your money, or malicious sites that install something on your computer using an exploit so that they can steal your data later.

Your WiFi may not be secure, which is where you do all your online banking, put in your credit card information, etc.

If your router has network security built in, enable it! Here is a guide to a few of the things you can do with your router's network security.

For example, if you have an Asus router, a lot of them ship with AiProtection but it may be turned off, so turn it on and get features like attack protection, malicious site blocking and infected device detection.

Buy a network security device to protect your home WiFi like the Cujo.

More: Lifewire - Disable WPS on Your Router Guide.

If a criminal is able to compromise your home network, they can monitor all of your traffic. If you like to keep it simple for guests to get on to when they come over, check if your router has a guest network. Your ISP can tell you if there is one and help get it setup.

Public WiFi spots get compromised, then a criminal can view the internet traffic on that WiFi network. This means they can see everything you're doing and everything you're typing into websites.

Install a VPN client on all of your devices and set it up to auto-secure untrusted networks. When you connect to a public WiFi network, the VPN should automatically start encrypting your traffic, making it harder to see.

More: Lifewire - 10 Reasons to Use a VPN.

If you're on an iPhone and see the red (1) on your settings app, it probably means you have an update ready.

Equifax's 80 million+ user compromise of social security numbers & personal information occurred because they didn't update their systems after a known vulnerability was exposed. The exploit was found and fixed, then 2 months after it was fixed Equifax still hadn't updated and then the data breach occurred.

Chrome is on the leading edge with security compared with Internet Explorer, Edge, Firefox, etc. They also auto update Chrome once installed, so you don't have to do anything to stay secure.

More: Download Google Chrome.

Here are some general rules I use myself:

• Windows
  • Windows comes with a firewall and anti-virus (Windows Defender) which does a decent job protecting your desktop/laptop. Malwarebytes and Avast are great application to download and run when you think your computer may be compromised.
• Mac
  • Make sure your user account has a decent password. If you think your computer might be compromised, download Malwarebytes and running a scan.
• iOS
  • Put a password lock on your phone
  • Don't download random apps you've never heard of. Sometimes malware gets onto the App Store and it is usually in utility apps like Flashlight apps.
• Android
  • Put a password lock on your phone
  • Try an app scanning program like Malwarebytes / Norton / etc, which scans websites you try to visit or apps you download from Google Play. Android is known to be looser with app approvals and infected apps slip into the store more than iOS.

More: For the best DIY security systems, check out WireCutter's guide.

"The ESA reported that 90 percent of convicted burglars avoid homes with alarm systems, and if they did encounter an alarm, they would abandon the attack." - source.

Security cameras aren't just for gas stations and crime solving TV shows anymore. There are now cost effective ways to monitor your home while you're away. If you want to know what is going on around your house while you're at work, consider buying a couple cameras. I like having all my doors covered (front, side, back) and any other areas someone may be creeping around.

Your alarm system company probably offers security cameras too, but I found that mine (FrontPoint) were over double the price of Arlo and not as well reviewed.

Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, etc, etc, etc, are all selling your data between themselves and to other companies. The purpose of this is marketing, so that consumers of that data can get a better picture about what your interests and needs are and sell you a product that meets those. Some people get scared about this, but generally these companies aren't selling your data with your name attached, they're linking you by your accounts, IP addresses, and advertising identifier.

Before you get upset, remember: they are building a product for millions of dollars and giving it to you for free. You are "paying" for this application by letting them try to sell you products they think you want. Personally I like this; some of the coolest birthday gifts I've received came from my wife's Instagram account.

If you are concerned, there are ways to limit the amount of sharing done by these companies. On iOS and Android there are ways to block products from using your advertising identifier to track you across sites. You can disable these:

• Google
• iOS
• Android

You can also use private browsing to limit an advertisers ability to track you. You can use Chrome and open "Incognito Tabs" which limit tracking.