Protecting Yourself from Identity Theft

Identity theft is a nonviolent crime that nonetheless leaves its victims feeling horribly violated and vulnerable. Once you've been exposed to it, you will probably never be the same in terms of how you view your personal information and whom you allow to have access to it. Following are some of the tips that you can take on your own to prevent identity theft from happening to you. Coupled with a partnership with one of the services in our identity theft protection network, you will be able to reset much easier secure in the lower probability that your identity will ever be stolen.

1. Shred it

You may have heard it before and time and again, but you should definitely be shredding all of your mail when you are finished with it. Simply throwing an old electricity bill or credit card bill in the trash once you've paid it is not sufficient. Invest in a good crosscut or confetti shredder and make good use of it. Your mail comes into your house in envelopes, and should never leave without having first passed through this shredder. Don't rely exclusively on the old strip shredders, as those leave information still fairly easy to reassemble or guess at, making you vulnerable. Your local electronics store or favorite internet shopping sites should have crosscut shredders available for less than $40.

2. Don't click it

Sending out bogus e-mails through 'phishing' has become an increasingly popular way of committing identity theft in the past few years. The process works by sending out thousands of e-mails at once to many people which look like they are coming from a legitimate bank. The logo of the bank is used in the e-mail and it is professionally worded to make it look serious. The e-mail will say something to the effect like your account has been frozen or that they are having trouble verifying your account so it may be frozen. In order to rectify the situation, the e-mail instructs you to click on a link to log into your account and verify your identity.

Once you click on the link you are taken to a website that may look very similar to your bank's website, but if you do not pay special attention to the URL for the bank you will be deceived. Instead of www.bankofamerica.com, you may actually be at www.bank0famerica.com (note the zero instead of 'o' in of). If you log in at this site using your username and password, that information will be transmitted to the identity thieves who sent out the e-mail and they will then have access to your real bank account and have it cleared out in no time flat.

In order to avoid falling prey to this insidious scam, do not ever click to your bank account and log in through the link on an e-mail. If you receive an e-mail that looks like it is from your bank, open your web browser yourself and manually type in the address or use your bookmark to get there before logging in.

3. Protect It

Another form of identity theft occurs over the phone. You may receive a call from someone claiming to be from your local fire department or some other charity soliciting donations for some event or other. After talking with you for awhile, sounding very polite and legitimate, they will ask you for your credit card number in order to authorize a small donation. If you give it to them, they will charge much more to your account than you expected and you will have no way of tracing them or finding the culprits.

In order to avoid being taken by this type of scam, if you fee generous, tell the caller that you would prefer to call them directly in order to make the donation and get their phone number. Odds are, they won't give you one and the call will end, but if they do give you a number, verify it against the number in your phone book or online as belonging to them before you call it back. Discover the types of identity theft on the previous page.