How to Protect Yourself Against Identity Theft

What is identity theft?

Identity theft has become rampant in today’s society. Everywhere we turn, we hear of credit card fraud. Everywhere we look we see ads for credit monitoring and protection services. Javelin Research puts out a study every year about identity theft statistics in the United States and these were some of the highlights from this year’s report:

• More fraud victims, but less money stolen
• $35,600 stolen per minute
• EMV drives a doubling of “new account” fraud
  • Credit cards are harder to defraud, so fraudsters are now targeting new accounts
• Those who do not use some form of monitoring or email alters can have their accounts used by a fraudster 75 percent longer and incur a 185 percent greater loss due to having no monitoring in place
• 18% of the identity fraud using U.S. credit cards was conducted outside of the U.S.

Why it is getting worse?

It seems that now the chip cards are so widely used in the U.S., the crooks are looking everywhere and anywhere for our social security numbers so that they can open new accounts in our names and spend money on these new accounts.

This can happen for months on end before someone even realizes it is happening, especially if you do not have any kind of monitoring set up and you don’t check your credit report regularly.

How bad It can be?

If you haven’t read this story on Forbes, be sure to check it out after you finish here. A woman named Amy Krebs’ entire life was taken over by a person faking her identity. The criminal had been using her identity for over six months before Amy caught wind and had opened close to 50 accounts in Amy’s name.

The criminal was living in the next town over, using Amy’s maiden name and she wasn’t just using Amy’s name to sign up for credit cards. She had utility bills, newspaper subscriptions, medical bills and just about anything else you can imagine – all in Amy’s name. She was living her life as another person.

She ended up getting arrested and convicted but only ended up serving community service but no jail time. And I bet all of the credit card companies made Amy their standard offer – “Hey Amy, since your identity got stolen, we will give you free credit monitoring for 6 months – but make sure to cancel the subscription or we will keep billing you for the rest of your life.” That is the standard response to identity theft these days, isn’t it?

Simple steps to protect yourself:

1. Keep your purse and wallet safe and secured at all times.
2. Only keep your essential documents and cards on you. You do not need to carry your social security card or birth certificate around with you.
3. Shred financial documents before you put them in the garbage. Dumpster-diving is still one of the most common ways that criminals steal identities.
4. Do not give anyone your SSN. Most companies that ask for it don’t actually require it. Doctor’s offices and schools for example – they don’t technically need it so don’t give it to them.
5. Credit monitoring (despite my humor in the last section) can be very helpful in preventing identity theft.
6. Check your credit score a couple of times per year and make sure you don’t see any accounts or activity that don’t belong to you. This is pretty easy these days, with the rise of truly free credit reporting apps like Credit Karma.
7. Do not use public wifi networks to do any banking or process any sensitive data. In fact, you should stay off of public wifi networks entirely if you can.
8. Stay away from phishing scams. If someone asks for your social security number or your driver’s license number online (even if it looks like a reputable site), always think twice before providing these types of information.
9. Use a strong password on your home wifi network and do not let strangers connect to it.
10. Use complex passwords, and mix them up for different websites. If you use the same password for every single login and someone finds your password in a leak – you’re screwed! You should at the very least use a different set of passwords for all of your banks and financial accounts.
11. If you don’t anticipate opening a new line of credit anytime soon, freeze your credit. You can easily freeze and unfreeze your credit with a short phone call to your three credit bureaus.
12. Keep an eye out for missing bills or financial documents that should arrive in the mail.
13. Only make online purchases from reputable retailers.
14. Check your bank account balances from time to time. You never know when an account may have been drained by a criminal who used your credit card to purchase Best Buy gift cards in large quantities.
15. Install and maintain a paid-for antivirus software. There are many free options available, but when it comes to your personal well-being you may want to invest a few dollars per month in a good antivirus software.
16. Be careful with what information you give out on social media and your blog. Social engineering is becoming a popular method of identity theft these days.
    • Social engineering is when someone uses human interaction and involves tricking people into breaking security procedures. Watch this video for a great example of social engineering.

A little due diligence goes a long way

There are so many ways that your identity can be stolen or compromised, and you will never be able to fully protect yourself. However, there are a lot of simple steps that you can take to at least slow the thieves down. The steps we listed are a great start on your way to protecting your identity from people with malicious intent. Even if you just implement a few of them, you are protecting yourself better than most people and hopefully when a hacker or identity thief comes after you, you have made it just difficult enough that they move on and try to hack the next person.