Never Give out Personal Information

Even basic details such as your name, telephone number and address can be misused by unscrupulous thieves and fraudsters, so be very careful about what information you give out to other people, and treat your personal identity as confidential.  Never give out personal information on the phone, email or direct mail unless you absolutely need to, and you can be sure the recipient is genuine.  Be very wary of anyone emailing or phoning you asking you to ‘confirm’ your credit card, bank account or online account log in details, as there is no reason why a legitimate provider would ask you such as question as they hold all of your records.

Monitor Your Bills

You must make sure you check every single bill, statement and invoice you receive each month, and confirm that all of the charges are legitimate.  Keep a running spreadsheet of your household costs so that you can compare your outgoings against your bills and if you see any suspicious entries make sure you report them immediately to your provider.  This is one of the first areas you can detect if anyone has stolen your key financial data such as your credit card number, and if you suspect your accounts have been tampered with you must report it as quickly as possible, as if you leave it too long the provider may be well within their rights to refuse to reimburse you, as you did not inform them soon enough to prevent fraudulent charges from being run up in your name.

Credit Report Monitoring

All the details of the credit accounts in your name are held on your consumer credit report by the three main agencies Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, and you can request a free copy of your report annually.  You can then use this report to check through all of the credit accounts, applications and addresses linked to your name, and if you spot any suspicious entries you can report them to the relevant credit agency.

Physical Identity Theft

You will have a number of key identity documents such as your birth certificate, passport, drivers license and Social Security Card, and these are very valuable documents and should be kept in a safe, secure place as if they are stolen they could be used for a number of serious fraudulent crimes from impersonation for tax fraud purposes through to human trafficking.  Never carry around key identity documents unless you absolutely have to (and then never leave them unattended) and make sure you dispose of old or obsolete documents in your care by shredding them, and not just throwing them in the rubbish.

Check the general security of your property, and make sure there are no obvious points of entry for opportunistic thieves, and make sure you lock doors and windows when you are going out.

Postal Identity Theft

The theft of documents containing your personal information such as bank statements, utility bills and pay slips is unfortunately quite common through the postal system, so you do need to make sure you check that you have received every bill or statement you were expecting each month, and chase them up if they are late.  Report any loss of post straight away to the US Postal Service on 1-800-275-8777 (Mon to Fri – 8am to 8:30 pm or Sat – 8am to 6pm ET).

If you are going to be away from home for a long time consider having your mail redirected to your local post office, so that it can be kept securely for you until you return, and also if you have any concerns about your post (such as living in a shared house) you could set up a private mail box either through USPS or a respected private mailing company and pick your mail up in person.  Banks can also arrange to have your new credit/debit cards and cheque books delivered directly to your local branch for you to pick up in person.

Online Identity Theft

Online identity theft can occur in a number of ways, and you should be very careful about what information you publish online as you cannot guarantee who will read it.  Never input personal details into websites that do not have a privacy policy, as they could be forwarding your details onto third parties and also never buy online from any website that does not have secure SSL encryption in place (look for a golden padlock and VeriSign logo and the prefix ‘https’ before the URL in the address bar).  Make sure you have up to date antivirus software in place to protect your computer from malware which could be used to compromise your security.

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.

We collect information from you when you register on our site or subscribe to our newsletter.

Any data we request that is not required will be specified as voluntary or optional.

When ordering or registering on our site, as appropriate, you may be asked to enter your: name or e-mail address. You may, however, visit our site anonymously.

Like most websites, we use cookies to enhance your experience, gather general visitor information, and track visits to our website. Please refer to the ‘do we use cookies?’ section below for information about cookies and how we use them.

What do we use your information for?

Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways:

• To personalize your experience
(your information helps us to better respond to your individual needs)

• To improve our website
(we continually strive to improve our website offerings based on the information and feedback we receive from you)

• To administer a contest, promotion, survey or other site feature

How do we protect your information?

We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information when you submit a request.

These security measures include: SSL (Secure Sockets Layered) technology to ensure that your information is fully encrypted and sent across the Internet securely.

We offer the use of a secure server. All supplied sensitive/credit information is transmitted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology and then encrypted into our Payment gateway providers database only to be accessible by those authorized with special access rights to such systems, and are required to keep the information confidential.

After a transaction, your private information (credit cards, social security numbers, financials, etc.) will not be stored on our servers.

Do we use cookies?

Yes (Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computers hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow) that enables the sites or service providers systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information.

Do we disclose any information to outside parties?

We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information. This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others’ rights, property, or safety. However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses.

Third party links

Occasionally, at our discretion, we may include or offer third party products or services on our website. These third party sites have separate and independent privacy policies. We therefore have no responsibility or liability for the content and activities of these linked sites. Nonetheless, we seek to protect the integrity of our site and welcome any feedback about these sites.

California Online Privacy Protection Act Compliance

Because we value your privacy we have taken the necessary precautions to be in compliance with the California Online Privacy Protection Act. We therefore will not distribute your personal information to outside parties without your consent.

Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act Compliance

We are in compliance with the requirements of COPPA (Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act), we do not collect any information from anyone under 13 years of age. Our website, products and services are all directed to people who are at least 13 years old or older.

Your Consent

By using our site, you consent to our privacy policy.

Changes to our Privacy Policy

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page, and/or update the Privacy Policy modification date below. Policy changes will apply only to information collected after the date of the change.

This policy was last modified on 2/03/2010

Contacting Us

If there are any questions regarding this privacy policy you may contact us using the information below.

branch site of http://www.bestidentityprotection.net

550 Veteran Ave #114
Los Angeles, CA 90024
United States
questions@bestidentityprotection.net

Privacy Policy Customer Pledge

We pledge to you, our customer, that we have made a dedicated effort to bring our privacy policy in line with the the following important privacy laws and initiatives:
Federal Trade Commission Fair
California Online Privacy Protection Act
Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act
Privacy Alliance

Affiliate Compensation Disclosure
This site sometimes receives commissions from the services reviewed.

•    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.

Credit Fraud

In reality you do not actually have to provide a great deal of personal information when applying for a new credit account. For example when you apply for a new credit card all you will need is your full name, address, date of birth, telephone number and Social Security Number.  You will also need to provide basic details about your address history and employment (such as salary, work telephone number and years of service) and you may also be asked if you have any other accounts with the company.  It is surprisingly easy for identity thieves to find out this information about individuals, which they can do by intercepting existing mail, stealing old bank statements and phone bills from rubbish bins and even by stealing people’s wallets and purses, so you can see how easy it would be for them to ‘borrow’ your details to set up new credit cards in your name without your knowledge (especially as they can apply online and by post and do not need to appear in person).

Physical Theft

Identity thieves can carry out fraudulent crimes simply by stealing your wallet, and a common tactic is to ‘shoulder surf’ when you are inputting your PIN number at a checkout or cash machine, and then steal your wallet/purse to gain access to your cards so that they can then empty your account.  It is important as soon as you know you cards have been stolen to phone your credit card company immediately and cancel them, and this will help to prevent too much damage to your account.  Thieves can also steal important identity documents from you such as passports, birth certificates and drivers licenses.

Jackal Fraud

Unfortunately it is becoming increasingly common for thieves to steal personal information of deceased persons, which they can then use to run a number of fraudulent activities almost undetected.  It is very important if you are responsible for sorting out a deceased person’s estate that you let all of the relevant agencies and authorities know that the person has passed away, and you should contact all of their bank and credit card providers, utility companies (including telephone and Internet), cell phone providers, and any other interest parties.

You should also report this to the consumer credit agencies (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion) who will then freeze the relevant credit file and ensure that no one can apply for credit fraudulently in their name in the future.