As a general rule, I would normally advise people to minimize the number of online accounts they have, including avoiding creating unnecessary accounts and closing accounts they no longer need. However, as a regular citizen, there are a handful of governmental accounts that exist for you already, whether you use them or not. And you should claim those accounts for yourself before bad guys do this on your behalf. Furthermore, as a home owner or modern consumer, you probably have several other accounts that you may never have claimed: utilities, financial institutions, medical portals, and more. Today I’ll tell you where and why to plant your flag.

In other news: Booking.com reservation data being used to scam customers; top background check service customers’ data leaked; Finnish psychotherapy extortion suspect arrested; FTC takes on telehealth data sharing; the ACLU lobbies court to restrict Google geofence warrant data; Anker admits to Eufy camera security bugs; fake, malicious Bitwarden ads deliver malware; maker of stalkerware fined and forced to notify victims; NIST proposes security protocols for low-power IoT devices. I also answer a listener question about IPv4 vs IPv6.

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