You'll Never Get Full Identity Protection If You Keep Doing These Three Things
At this time when financial transactions such as fund withdrawals
, transfers and payments can be transacted between banks, merchandisers, and fund owners, buyers, or their intermediaries without the necessity of physical presence, identities are verified on the fly or online, and presumed to be valid upon the presentation of a valid set of data or information to an automated verifier.
In short, information about you has taken over your physical presence to validate transactions being done in your name. With this development and convenience come a new set of thieves who thrive on using the identities of unsuspecting individuals, assuming and taking advantage of their identities. This explains why identity theft protection is now a popular topic and a necessary personal security consideration.
If you are unaware of, or prone to doing the following simple mistakes, your identity as a person could be in danger of being stolen:
Rules 1.You Easily Give Away Information About Yourself. The first rule in identity theft protection is that the less information you divulge about yourself, the better. Every time you fill in a form, coupon, whether hard copy or over the Internet, or simply divulge information about yourself to an interviewer, you risk having that information being misused or abused. This is where some paranoia pays off.
You must always suspect that not all information data bases are secure and beyond hacker penetration. Only reveal so much of yourself as absolutely necessary. Be selective on who you give personal information to.
Rules 2. You Are Careless In Disposing Of Trash Materials/Documents Containing Personal Information
Identity thieves are a patient and hardworking lot. Once they have identified their prey, they will painstakingly gather and accumulate useful information about the individual from various possible sources, including (and especially) his trash can.
The trash can of the careless person is a rich source of personal information contained in un-shredded credit card receipts and bills, discarded forms, subscription notices, and the like. (By the way, that mailbox, easily accessible at your front lawn, also contains the same information about you.)
If you discard computer hardware and writable media, such as hard drives, solid state memory cards, CDs and floppy disks, be sure to erase their contents before doing so. There is a slew of software available which can literally obliterate data written on certain media, rendering them unreadable by even the shrewdest hacker. Merely deleting your files and folders will not do the trick.
Rules 3. You Have Unsecure Computer Usage and Online Habits. Most identity thefts breaches occur during online usage, i.e., when individuals are connected over the Internet or across networks, primarily because of security lapses and carelessness of users. The Internet is a useful and fun place to be in, but there are rogues out there - websites, viruses, spyware, malware, and of course, people.
This is where identity theft protection is most demanded from the user as well as from the software that is used, such as browsers, email clients and most application software which invariably have some form of connecting to the Internet in one way or another.
Be sure to familiarize yourself with the security features and settings of your software, especially regarding privacy. More and more, major software applications are cognizant of privacy issues and are there to help you.
Rules 1 and 2 are especially applicable in the virtual world just as they are in the physical. Furthermore, the rules of identity theft protection will continue to change just as the Internet, the online transaction environment and even private networks continue to evolve in toward complexity and simplicity.
The wise person would take this article as a starting point for further research and guidance on the subject. As the rewards of identity theft entice more and more scrupulous individuals to the practice, there will be a lot more to learn.
by: li baocai
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You'll Never Get Full Identity Protection If You Keep Doing These Three Things Anaheim