Top Tips To Help You Avoid Identity Theft
Top Tips To Help You Avoid Identity Theft
Here are ten tips to help you avoid getting your identity stolen by By James Varga, founder of miiCard (www.miicard.com)
1. Only Buy From Trusted Websites
One of the easiest tricks crooks use to steal your identity is to create a fake e-commerce site and get you to enter your private financial information on it. Many of these fake sites lure in customers by providing what seem like incredible deals for their products. It's best to stick with sites that use trusted payment providers such as Paypal. Known marks of trusted, secure websites include verification from Verisign or Truste as well as an "https" in the web address.
2. Use a Secure Network
If unsecured, your wireless network can be tapped into by hackers, identity thieves, and other ne'er-do-wells. Before performing financial transactions on your home network, find out if your network is secured. If it isn't, check your router's documentation for how to secure the network. Locking your router will make sure that any information you send over the Internet is encrypted and therefore inaccessible to thieves. Ask a tech-savvy friend to help you out with this one.
3. Regularly Monitor Your Credit Report
Ask your credit agency to send you a copy of your credit report every so often to make sure that everything is as it should be with your credit. Since your credit standing is of major importance in this age, it's important to keep a watchful eye on it to make sure nothing is amiss. See number ten for more details on monitoring your financial transactions.
4. Use Different Passwords
Although you may not have to use a different password for every email and social networking account you access, it's important to at least use a different and unique password for each of your various bank accounts, credit cards, and other online financial accounts. This way, if a thief gets hold of one of your passwords, he or she won't automatically be in charge of your entire life.
5. Be Careful About Using Public Computers
When away from home, it's easy to go to the library or a cyber caf and act as if you were in your own living room. This is unwise for many reasons. Public computer history files and caches can be easily mined for your personal information after you are gone. If you must perform an online financial transaction from a public computer, be sure to completely sign out afterward and delete all history and cache information.
6. Use Those Annoying Security Questions
As annoying as they are, security questions are a great way to prevent identity thieves from hacking into your life. Questions such as, "What is your father's middle name?" are difficult for third parties to figure out and provide added protection for your financial information. If your account allows you the opportunity to add a few of these questions to the log-in process, it may be a good idea.
7. Don't Bother With Spam
As alluring as their titles may be, the emails redirected to your spam folder by your email account's spam filter really are worthless at best and harmful at worst. Spam emails are currently quite big in the identity theft world so it's best to steer clear of them altogether, and please, by all means, never download attachments from unknown senders.
8. Verify Calls From Your Bank
Be wary of anyone who calls you claiming to be from your bank. Your bank has no reason to call you for personal information that is already on file with them.
9. Mobile Devices Can Be Stolen or Lost
If you happen to have your personal financial information stored on a cell phone, PDA, or USB drive when that device is lost or stolen, well, even a non-praying man would be wise to get down on his knees. Even better, don't keep financial info any place it can be easily be taken from you. Just to be safe, put a password lock on your mobile device.
10. Use Online Alerts
Many banking and credit institutions now offer to send you an alert when your accounts reach certain parameters such as being nearly empty or conducting a large transfer of money. This is a great way to find out quickly if someone is tapping into your identity and can often help you to shut them down before they do serious damage. You can use a site like Money Dashboard to keep track of all your financial transactions.
With an average of 93 million people falling prey to identity theft every year causing a combined total of more than 400 billion dollars so far, it's wise to treat this threat as the danger that it is and handle all your online transactions with care.
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