Identity Theft Protection Services

There are a number of professional Identity Theft Protection Services now offering competitive packages from just $4.99 per month that can provide you with a number of practical and effective tools to safeguard your personal information against identity thieves and fraudsters. Top features include:

• Consumer Credit Report Monitoring – every consumer has a credit history report and this can be used to identify if any fraudsters have gained access to your personal details and are using them to set up fraudulent accounts in your name, and Identity Theft Protection Services can help you to monitor your report 24/7 and alert you immediately if any suspicious changes have taken place.

• Consumer Credit Report Freeze – this is a valuable tool if you do suspect you have become a victim of identity theft and will freeze your credit report so that no one (including yourself) can set up new credit accounts in your name. This can protect you against fraudsters who may have stolen enough personal details about you to impersonate you when applying for new credit cards, mobile phone contracts or utility bills, and can save you a lot of time and hassle as it can be very difficult sorting out fraudulent credit accounts.

• Recovery – Identity Theft Protection Services can also provide you with professional support if you do become a victim of identity theft, and this can be invaluable to help guide you through the time consuming process of clearing your good name and recovering costs, and can also provide you with financial support as well.

Spammers

Did you know it is illegal to send unsolicited commercial spam messages in US and Europe? This means that you can report people who have been sending you spam, and if enough complaints are received the spammer could be fined and even imprisoned. Spam can contain a number of scams and malware designed to compromise your security, so don’t let spammers get away with their unscrupulous activities and if you receive an unsolicited message do not open it, and if you live in the US you can forward it straight on to the official spam reporting inbox provided by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) at ‘spam@uce.gov’. The FTC will then store the spam email and record your complaint and measures will be taken to deal with serious offenders. You can also report spam to your Internet Service Provider (ISP), and if you know the originating ISP of the spam email as well you can report it to them as well, and you can check the individual ISP website to find out how you need to report spam.

Know Your Friends

Most social websites offer you privacy functions, where only your authorised friends can access your profile pages and contact you.  It is a good idea to use these security settings to help maintain a level of control over the data you are publishing on your membership pages, and also if you feel someone is harassing you or overstepping your personal boundaries then you can block them from contacting you through the website in the future.  Make sure you don’t give out your personal email, telephone or address details to anyone who you do not know, and just because you have built up a good relationship with them online does not mean you ‘know’ them, as it could literally be anyone pretending to be a fun, nice person when in fact they are just putting on an act.  As you will have probably heard in the media paedophiles and other sinister types frequent chat rooms and social sites pretending to be something that they are not in order to lure other people into becoming friends with them, and many of them can be very convincing, so this is why it is important not to ever post or give out any personal information about yourself online.

Posting Information Online

You must be careful about all the information you publish online, and this includes any personal data you reveal when you are in social websites and chat rooms.  Identity thieves and fraudsters are very clever about accessing the personal information you publish when talking to friends or posting comments, and extracting from this key information that can be used to ‘guess’ your personal log in passwords for online accounts.  For example if you have forgotten your password most websites ask you a ‘memorable’ question to prove who you are so that you can get the password sent to you again.  It is common for people to use maiden names, places of birth, pet names and the place they met their partner as the memorable question, but all of this is the type of data you might mention when chatting online to friends or posting profiles of yourself on social sites, and if you have published it online then anyone will be able to read it and could use it against you.

If you do enjoy social networking then be very careful about the data you post, and use just your nickname or an online alias instead of your real name to make it more difficult for unscrupulous individuals to connect the information you publish to your true identity and use it against you.

Online Threats

There are a number of online threats you should be aware of when you are using the Internet which could impact your personal identity security and these can range from malware that can attack your computer and steal personal data from your system through to online scams that are designed to trick you into revealing key information about yourself such as your bank account details and passwords. Here are just a few examples of the online threats that you could be exposed to when using the Internet, and how to protect your identity against them.

Malware

Certain types of malware (known as spyware) are designed to infect your computer and then record private information about your online activities to transmit to third parties. Keyloggers for example record the keystrokes you input on your keyboard in sequential order, and can also take screen prints of the page you were on at the time of typing and this can be used by identity thieves and fraudsters to record and steal your personal account log ins when you are accessing online email, banking or shopping websites. Adware is also a common problem on the Internet, and is designed to record what pages you commonly visit in order to direct the adverts you see whilst online, and although this is not a high risk security threat it does impose on your privacy. It is very important that you have adequate computer security in place from a leading provider such Norton, MacAfee, Kaspersky or AVG, and also a firewall.

Scams

There are hundreds of scams operating online, and many of these are designed to trick you into revealing personal information about yourself such as your online account log ins or your credit card details. When you are logging onto any online account make sure you are going through the correct homepage each time and never log in via an email link, as you have no way of guaranteeing this will direct you to right place and there are many sophisticated fake websites designed to look like your normal log in pages which actually record your password details so that fraudsters can then access your real account.

You should also be very careful when shopping online and never input your personal payment details onto a website that does not have full security in place which should include full Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption shown by a locked golden padlock in the address bar and the prefix ‘https’ before the website URL. You should also check to see if the website has additional security such as a VeriSign logo, and you will need to follow the link to ensure this is a legitimate logo.

•    Telephone, postal and email scams – the easiest way for thieves to steal your data is to trick you into revealing it yourself, by exposing you to a number of different scams either by telephone, email or the postal system.  It is very important that you never give out sensitive personal and financial details unless you are absolutely sure it is a genuine request, and remember your bank or credit card provider would never ask you for your give out your  private log in or account details over the phone or by email.

•    Business Record Theft – your personal details may be held with a number of businesses, such as your credit card number when you pay for goods or services, and thieves can target business databases and steal thousands of customer details in one hit.  They can do this by hacking into the business computer records or by bribing an employee to pass certain important information along to them.

•   Shoulder Surfing – this simple scam involves standing behind someone at the checkout, ATM queue or shared public internet access (cafes, libraries etc) and memorising the private pins and passwords as they input them.  They can also listen in if you are paying for something over the phone in a public place and have to read out your credit details to the cashier.

•    Rubbish – a huge percentage of people throw away important documents in the rubbish without shredding them, and this gives thieves the opportunity to pick up vital information from the trash such as bank statements and credit card, cell phone and utility bills.  You should always shred anything containing your personal data, even if it is just your address and name before putting it in the trash.

•    Stealing Wallets and purses – this age old method is an easy way for thieves to get hold of your credit cards, debit cards and other key pieces of personal data, so if you find your have lost your wallet or had it stolen make sure you cancel your plastic cards immediately.