I coach executives and high-net-worth people on personal cybersecurity, and almost everyone comes to me after something already went wrong — not before.

Here's what I've learned: most "security tips" articles are noise. Long passwords, don't click suspicious links, blah blah. That's not where people actually get hit. Three things matter way more:

1. SIM swapping is the real threat, not phishing.

If your phone number is tied to your bank, email recovery, or crypto exchange, you are one social-engineered call to your carrier away from losing everything. Get a PIN lock on your carrier account today. This takes 10 minutes and blocks the single most common attack vector I see.

2. Your email recovery chain is a house of cards.

Most people have Email A recover into Email B, which recovers into a phone number that's also used for banking 2FA. One weak link compromises the whole chain. Map your recovery chain and break the circular dependencies — this is 90% of what I do in initial audits.

3. Data brokers are how people find you, not hacking.

Doxxing rarely starts with a hack. It starts with a $20 people-search site that has your home address, family members, and phone number from public records. Opt out of the major broker sites (there are ~40 of them) — most people have never done this once.

None of this requires being technical. It requires knowing where the actual exposure is, which most generic advice skips entirely.

Happy to answer questions if anyone's dealing with this.