PCS Move Cybersecurity Checklist: Protect Your Family's Accounts and Identity Before Orders Hit

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Read this first, personal devices only: This guide covers your personal phones, laptops and accounts on your personal time. No VPN, CyberFence or any other, belongs on a government-issued device or government network without explicit command authorization. OPSEC rules vary by branch, command and assignment, and they change. Always follow your command's guidance first.

Orders arrive, and suddenly your family is doing a dozen high-stakes things at once: finding housing in a city you have never seen, booking movers, forwarding mail, closing utilities, opening new ones and living on hotel Wi-Fi for weeks. Every one of those steps moves your personal information around. Scammers know the PCS calendar as well as you do.

According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an estimated 400,000 servicemembers make a permanent change of station every year, and servicemember reports about identity theft are increasing. The CFPB notes that identity theft can even threaten security clearances and housing options. Here is a practical checklist for your family's personal devices and accounts, organized by phase.

Phase 1: As Soon as Orders Arrive

Lock down your credit

• Freeze your credit at all three bureaus. The FTC says a freeze is the best way to keep scammers out of your credit report. It is free, and you can lift it temporarily when you need to apply for a lease or loan.
• Add an active duty alert if you are deploying or don't expect to seek new credit. It requires creditors to take extra steps to verify your identity, and the FTC notes it lasts a year and can be renewed.
• Sign up for free active duty credit monitoring with each of the three bureaus. The CFPB says active duty servicemembers, reservists on active duty and National Guard members are eligible, but you have to request it from each bureau separately.

Clean up your accounts

• Turn on multi-factor sign-in for email, banking, your military pay and benefits accounts, and any housing or moving portals you will use.
• Change any reused passwords. A password manager makes this realistic for a whole family.
• Update your phone and laptop and turn on automatic updates before the chaos starts.

Phase 2: House Hunting and Booking Movers

This is where most PCS fraud happens. Military OneSource lists PCS scams involving housing offers, movers or shipments, fraudulent deposit requests and fake travel and lodging messages. MOAA has reported Army Criminal Investigation Command warnings about rising housing scams targeting military families.

Rental listing red flags

• Rent well below similar homes nearby
• A "landlord" who can't show the home because they are overseas, deployed or out of town
• Pressure to send a deposit before you sign anything or see the property
• Requests to pay by wire, gift card, cryptocurrency or a payment app
• "PCS families preferred" language with no verifiable connection to the installation

Before you pay, search the address online to see if the same home is listed elsewhere with a different owner or price, ask someone you trust to drive by, and call the housing office at your new installation. They can help identify legitimate options and known scams.

Moving company checks

If you are arranging a personally procured move, Military OneSource advises using a mover registered with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and checking Better Business Bureau reviews. Watch for quotes that look too low, demands for large up-front payments, and online "movers" that are really brokers.

Protect the paperwork

Lease applications ask for a lot: Social Security numbers, pay statements, copies of orders. Only send them through a verified portal, never to an email address from a listing you haven't confirmed. Ask yourself the FTC's question: why do they need this, and what will happen to it?

Phase 3: On the Road and in Temporary Lodging

Between the old house and the new one, your family may spend weeks on hotel, lodging, airport and coffee-shop Wi-Fi, often while checking bank balances, signing leases and paying deposits.

• Encrypt your personal devices on shared Wi-Fi. A VPN encrypts traffic between your device and the VPN server, so others on the same network can't read it. That matters most when you are logging in to banking or housing portals from a lobby network. Our guide to banking on hotel Wi-Fi explains the risks in plain language.
• Turn on the kill switch so your device stops sending traffic if the VPN connection drops on spotty lodging Wi-Fi.
• Watch for fake lodging messages. Military OneSource flags fake travel and lodging communications as a PCS scam. Confirm reservations through the official site or phone number, not a link in a text.
• Check bank and card activity often. The FTC recommends reviewing statements while traveling and locking cards you are not using.

Phase 4: After You Arrive

• Set up your new home router securely. Change the default admin password, use WPA3 or WPA2 encryption and update the firmware.
• Forward mail through the official USPS service and confirm the change. Watch for unexpected address-change confirmations, which can be a sign of fraud.
• Pull your credit reports at AnnualCreditReport.com and look for accounts you don't recognize.
• Talk with your kids. New schools and new friends mean new apps and new group chats. Our guide to protecting your military family from scams covers family-wide habits.

If Something Goes Wrong

Contact the payment provider immediately and ask about reversing the payment, change passwords on any affected accounts, and report identity theft at IdentityTheft.gov for a recovery plan. The FTC also suggests letting your commanding officer know, so they are not surprised if creditors call. Your installation's Personal Financial Manager or legal assistance office can help at no cost.

Where CyberFence Helps on Personal Devices

• US-operated VPN with AES-256-GCM encryption for personal phones, tablets and laptops on hotel, lodging and public Wi-Fi
• Web Shield DNS blocking of known phishing and malware sites, including scam links sent by text or email
• Kill switch to keep traffic from leaking if the connection drops
• Whole-family coverage on one subscription, run under a zero-logs policy

A VPN won't spot a fake rental listing for you. The verification steps above do that. If you want alerts when your email turns up in a known data breach, CyberFence offers Breach Monitor as a separate product. For deployment-specific advice, see VPN for deployed military personnel.

Before you install anything: check your command's current OPSEC and device guidance. Use CyberFence only on your personal devices and personal networks, never on government-issued equipment or government networks without explicit authorization.

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