Thanks to social media, people are sharing more information about themselves than ever before. But that openness also puts them at risk for identity theft. According to the Federal Trade Commission, identify theft remained the number one consumer complaint in 2014. And what’s more, the Identity Theft Resource Center reported that data breaches tracked reached a record high of 783 in 2014, an increase of 27.5% compared to a year ago.
Untangling the repercussions of identity theft can take more than a year and cause a lot of headaches. Identity theft isn’t going away any time soon, but that doesn’t mean you have to be a victim. There are steps you can take to reduce your risk, and it all starts with being discriminating about who you share your information with.
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In this digital world, you may not think criminals are going to care about what’s in your garbage. But think again. People often throw out documents with important information such as Social Security numbers and account numbers and don’t think twice about it. But if that garbage falls into the wrong hands, your identity can easily be stolen. An easy way to prevent that from happening is to shred your documents
Keep Your Passwords Protected
These days, manually writing down your passwords, bank account numbers and other identifying information on paper seems arcane, but it’s actually a great way to protect your identity. Far too often people leave that information in a Word document on their hard drive. They don’t give it a second thought, practice bad web surfing behaviors and before they know it their computer has been infiltrated and those passwords stolen. If you are going to store passwords on your computer, make sure the information is encrypted and that you have up-to-date security software installed.
The type of passwords you have for your online accounts is very important to protecting your identity. It may be an inconvenience to create a unique, complex password for each account and change it on a regular basis, but it’s becoming increasingly necessary in today’s cyber world.
Untangling the repercussions of identity theft can take more than a year and cause a lot of headaches. Identity theft isn’t going away any time soon, but that doesn’t mean you have to be a victim. There are steps you can take to reduce your risk, and it all starts with being discriminating about who you share your information with.
Limit Who Gets Your Personal Information
Keeping your Social Security number protected from the criminals is one of the best steps a person can take. According to the FTC, the most common way for thieves to steal an identity is through government documents and records. Protecting your Social Security number doesn’t require much. All it means is never giving it out over the phone, using it on unsecure websites or carrying your Social Security card on you. The last thing you want to do is lose your wallet or enable a hacker to get ahold of this information. Criminals are very savvy when it comes to deceiving people, so if someone sends you an email or calls you requesting your Social Security number, get their phone number or website address and check it out before providing any details.Be Wary of Official Appearing Websites
Tax time is around the corner, which means the scammers will be out in force. According to the FTC tax returns are a very lucrative target for the bad guys, so people should be on the lookout for services that make it easy to file a tax return, particularly if it’s a mobile app. The site may be a fake one, designed to obtain your tax return information. With that they can file to get a refund, but using their name instead of yours. (See also: How To Safeguard Your Tax Returns From Identity Theft.)
Shred Your Documents
In this digital world, you may not think criminals are going to care about what’s in your garbage. But think again. People often throw out documents with important information such as Social Security numbers and account numbers and don’t think twice about it. But if that garbage falls into the wrong hands, your identity can easily be stolen. An easy way to prevent that from happening is to shred your documents
Keep Your Passwords Protected
These days, manually writing down your passwords, bank account numbers and other identifying information on paper seems arcane, but it’s actually a great way to protect your identity. Far too often people leave that information in a Word document on their hard drive. They don’t give it a second thought, practice bad web surfing behaviors and before they know it their computer has been infiltrated and those passwords stolen. If you are going to store passwords on your computer, make sure the information is encrypted and that you have up-to-date security software installed.
The type of passwords you have for your online accounts is very important to protecting your identity. It may be an inconvenience to create a unique, complex password for each account and change it on a regular basis, but it’s becoming increasingly necessary in today’s cyber world.
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