How to Protect Yourself From Identity Theft

Identity theft is big business. In 2007 alone there were over 670,000 reports of consumer fraud and ID theft.

So how do you protect yourself? What can you do to prevent identity theft from happening to you?

While you may not be able to protect yourself from all cases of fraud or identity theft, there are a few simple things that you can do to help keep your information out of criminal hands. If you make these steps your regular habits, they will serve as a shield for your personal information, and make the possibility of identity theft a lot less likely.

Shred Your Personal Information:

Most of us already know that we should be doing this - but very few of us do! You can buy a cheap shredder at any office store, and run every single personal document through it before you throw it away.

Honestly, the possibility of an identity thief spending time sorting through your garbage is becoming more and more remote. There are just easier ways to steal someone’s personal information. However, it does still happen! So it’s still a good idea to protect your identity by shredding your documents and mail. Make sure anything with a bank account number, credit card number, social security number, or even your date of birth gets destroyed before it goes into the trash.

Switch To Electronic Statements:

If you switch over to electronic bank and credit card statements, your personal information passes through fewer hands before it gets to you. That means there is less chance for it to be intercepted through the mail, stolen from your mailbox, or (eventually) pulled out of your trash.

Use Cash More Often:

It never ceases to amaze me that some people are so paranoid about identity theft that they will shred all of their mail, and refuse to use a credit card online. Yet those same people will happily hand their credit card to a teenager at a drive through or in a restaurant and not watch what they do with it.

Why does this amaze me? Because I had my identity stolen this way. I handed my debit card to a guy at McDonald’s and about a week later a small charge was made on my credit card from the same McDonald’s. Since I still had my debit card in my wallet, I can only assume that they copied the information and ran a charge through to see if it worked.

Luckily, I caught the charge and was able to immediately cancel my card before they did more damage. From now on, I am going to pay with cash when I eat at a restaurant, period. No more handing it over in the drive through or sticking my credit card into the little folio and letting the waitress walk away with it. Just cash.

Read Your Emails Carefully:

We’re probably all familiar with the Nigerian entrepreneurs that spam our in boxes with letters like this one:

Greetings and Bless you!

You are probably tempted to be hearing from me I am Anna Hayes daughter of the late Mark Hayes a pioneer in the British Royal Navy. When my father passed he left a large sum of money $4,000,000.00 that must needs be transferred into the United States…..

Ok, so we all know those are bogus. The types of emails to watch out for are a little more insidious. Take Paypal for instance. I get an average of two letters a week stating that something is wrong with my Paypal account. The letters encourage me to click a link and log in to verify my account.

When you click the link, the page is set up to look exactly like a Paypal page, but it isn’t. It’s a dummy page intended to steal my log on information.

So, when you get an email, any email, whether it is from Paypal, or one of your credit card companies, or your bank, always check the sending address. In other words, if it does not say: address@paypal.com, or address@Americanexpress.com it is not legitimate.

If it says address@paypal.something.com, it’s not from Paypal - it’s from people trying to commit fraud.

Likewise, check the addresses of any links that you click to be sure that they show the correct domain name.

Online Credit Card Applications

As a final note, be careful with online credit card applications. Make sure they are from legitimate websites like this one -The Credit Beacon, or the link above. Make sure that address bar at the top of your browser has an https://www, and not just an http://www. the “s” means it’s a secure connection - otherwise your personal information is not being encrypted and it can be easily stolen.

If you follow these steps regularly you will protect yourself from many of the most common types of identity theft and fraud.

How about you? Do you have any identity protection tips? Leave a comment below!