Identity Theft Protection: Learn How to Protect Yourself

Learn­ing about iden­tity theft pro­tec­tion may save your good name. Many of our inter­ac­tions these days are linked to a num­ber such as a social secu­rity num­ber or credit card num­ber. Our passes to other types of busi­ness deal­ings also include online pass­words. We are all accus­tomed to hav­ing these access codes as a way to live and do busi­ness in our world today. We are so accus­tomed to them that we some­times are relaxed in pro­tect­ing them. This is where the iden­tity thief makes his living—thriving off of your unin­ten­tional mis­takes in pro­tect­ing your per­sonal infor­ma­tion. You can prac­tice good iden­tity theft pro­tec­tion by tak­ing proac­tive mea­sures to pre­vent it.

What is Iden­tity Theft?

Iden­tity theft is when some­one else steals the right infor­ma­tion about you and does things to make oth­ers think he is you. Iden­tity theft is in most cases about fraud­u­lent finan­cial gain. One of the main goals of this crime is to get access to your credit cards, debit cards, and bank account in order to steal from you.

In the old days before the inter­net, the crime existed how­ever trans­ac­tions like using a credit card had to be done in per­son with iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. It was a lit­tle more dif­fi­cult because an alert store employee could spot a pos­si­ble fraud. But when trans­ac­tions became elec­tronic via the inter­net, a whole new oppor­tu­nity grew. The anony­mous nature of the inter­net made it much eas­ier for iden­tity thieves to steal and use your per­sonal infor­ma­tion and cre­ates the need for iden­tity theft protection.

The iden­tity thief’s intent is to be you and not just for a prank but to actu­ally get some finan­cial gain out of it. Iden­tity thieves apply for credit cards, open bank accounts, pur­chase goods, and even join the mil­i­tary to hide while using your name and social secu­rity number.

How to Pro­tect Your­self From Iden­tity Theft

Pre­vent­ing iden­tity theft takes a total approach to guard­ing per­sonal infor­ma­tion com­ing into your home and what you take out of it. These areas include:

• Pro­tect­ing your documents
• Keep­ing a low profile
• Hav­ing a plan when you lose items with per­sonal information
• Pro­tect­ing your credit cards
• Guard­ing your mail
• Pro­tect­ing online information
• Prac­tic­ing good tele­phone security

These are just some of the cat­e­gories where you should imple­ment a strat­egy of how to pre­vent iden­tity theft. The objec­tive is to pro­tect infor­ma­tion that is poten­tially valu­able to an iden­tity thief. The next sec­tions explain more about what to con­sider when pro­tect­ing these areas. You can con­sider these a list of free iden­tity theft pro­tec­tion tips.

Pro­tect­ing Your Documents

Pro­tect­ing your doc­u­ments means safely stor­ing infor­ma­tion that is either on paper or in elec­tronic form. It also means destroy­ing paper doc­u­ments that you no longer need. Don’t let old bills, doc­u­ments with per­sonal infor­ma­tion, credit card state­ments, and bank state­ments pile up because this makes them dif­fi­cult to dis­pose of prop­erly. Invest in a shred­der that destroys doc­u­ments through a cross-cutting fash­ion. Cross-cut keeps a would-be iden­tity thief from eas­ily reassem­bling the shreds.

Keep­ing a Low Profile

This way of pro­tect­ing your iden­tity is not obvi­ous to every­one. Many of us have a nat­ural ten­dency to show off the new “toys” we just bought. For exam­ple, if a per­son invested in a fancy new home enter­tain­ment sys­tem, there is a ten­dency for that same per­son to have a sense of pride and show off a lit­tle. We all do it from time to time. But there is a dan­ger that this will alert all types of thieves as to your prosperity–including iden­tity thieves. Use a lit­tle com­mon sense before broad­cast­ing what you just bought to strangers and take the empty boxes for your new equip­ment to a dump­ster instead of putting them on the front curb for pickup.

Secur­ing your Phone Against Iden­tity Theft

So many peo­ple these days are car­ry­ing around smart­phones and iPads. Some use these devices to store all sorts of per­sonal and finan­cial infor­ma­tion. Even a tra­di­tional cell phone (the non-“smart” type) can be of value to an iden­tity thief because of the stored phone numbers.

The real dan­ger is when you lose one of these devices and you will at some time in your life. Any elec­tronic mobile device that you use with sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion on it needs to be secured with a pass­word. Check the instruc­tions that came with your elec­tronic devices and fol­low the instruc­tions for secur­ing them.

Iden­tity Theft Pro­tec­tion and Your Credit Cards

If an iden­tity thief has stolen your credit card num­ber, the obvi­ous indi­ca­tion of this will be when you see fraud­u­lent activ­ity on your credit card state­ment. Unfor­tu­nately, many do not look at their state­ments closely. Besides check­ing your state­ments thor­oughly, there are other actions you need to take when pro­tect­ing your credit cards. First, you should only carry the credit cards you need and lock up the other ones. Know which ones you are car­ry­ing and have the phone num­bers for them handy in the event you lose your wal­let or purse.

Iden­tity thieves like to look over the shoul­ders of oth­ers using their credit cards. With this in mind, you should always cover your PIN num­ber when pur­chas­ing an item at the cash reg­is­ter and using your debit card. Remem­ber that debit cards these days are almost like credit cards except they are linked to your check­ing account. An iden­tity thief could quickly empty your account with that debit card and your PIN number.

Also, when you hand over your credit card to a store employee in order to make a pur­chase, make sure you watch the employee. See that he or she only swipes the card in one machine. Then, when the employee hands your card back, take the time to look at it and make sure it is yours.

Pro­tect­ing Your Mail

Most res­i­den­tial mail is unse­cured and wait­ing for you to pick it up when you get home. There is really noth­ing to stop an iden­tity thief from get­ting your mail prior to your arrival. Obvi­ously, you should pick up your mail as soon as pos­si­ble or con­sider get­ting a post office box (not every­one you do busi­ness with will accept a post office box address). But you should go one step fur­ther and track your reg­u­lar mail from those whom you do busi­ness with. If you find that you are not get­ting your reg­u­lar mail then you need to find out why. It could be that an iden­tity thief is grab­bing your mail with­out your knowl­edge. Never go on vaca­tion with­out get­ting a trusted friend to pick up your mail while you are gone.

Online Iden­tity Theft Protection

A com­mon way for iden­tity thieves to steal your credit card num­ber, pass­word, and other per­sonal infor­ma­tion is through phish­ing. Phish­ing is when you are asked through the e-mail to ver­ify some infor­ma­tion like your pass­word or credit card num­ber on file. You are directed to a web page that looks exactly like the web page you do busi­ness with except it isn’t. Then, iden­tity thieves trap the pass­word and other infor­ma­tion you enter and use it for their crime. The best way to tell if a web page is used for phish­ing is to look at the URL. It should point to the legit­i­mate web­site of the busi­ness it is rep­re­sent­ing. If you can­not tell that way, then either don’t go to the site or call the company’s sup­port num­ber to express your concern.

Be care­ful of the web­sites you visit. Shady web­sites some­times intro­duce spy­ware which can cap­ture your infor­ma­tion. Always cre­ate pass­words that are dif­fi­cult to hack by using a com­bi­na­tion of let­ters and numbers.

On Guard When on the Phone

The final way to pro­tect against iden­tity theft is to never give your credit card num­ber over the tele­phone unless it was you who called the other com­pany. Always be sus­pi­cious if some calls you to make an offer and asks for your credit card num­ber. You never know who really is on the other end of that tele­phone line.

Iden­tity Pro­tec­tion: Why it’s Important

It is def­i­nitely a good idea to con­sider some form of iden­tity pro­tec­tion. Iden­tity theft is a very real dan­ger in today’s world of elec­tronic con­ve­nience. ID theft is where infor­ma­tion about who you are is used by some­one else. But there is an answer to this prob­lem through the ser­vices of an iden­tity pro­tec­tion com­pany. Let’s look at what they can do to pro­tect you.

The Best Iden­tity Theft Pro­tec­tion Services

Tak­ing your own pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures is a great start to pre­vent­ing iden­tity theft in this first place. But in this day in age with our per­sonal infor­ma­tion spread over so many places it’s still pos­si­ble that an iden­tity thief could get a hold of your infor­ma­tion. That is why we rec­om­mend that you look into enhanced iden­tity theft pro­tec­tion from a pro­fes­sional provider as well. Our top Editor’s Choice picks are Life­lock and Iden­tity Guard.

Life­lock Reviews

Life­lock is the most pop­u­lar iden­tity theft pro­tec­tion provider and many peo­ple have seen their com­mer­cials on TV or heard them on the radio. Their CEO, Todd Davis, likes to give out his own per­sonal social secu­rity num­ber as proof of his belief in the ser­vices that his com­pany offers. They pro­vide great cov­er­age at an afford­able price. To read more about their ser­vice check out our Life­lock Review and if you are plan­ning on order­ing you’ll want to make use of our exclu­sive dis­count by using our Life­lock promo code.

Iden­tity Guard

Next to Life­lock, Iden­tity Guard also receives top marks for being an all-around excel­lent iden­tity theft pro­tec­tion ser­vice provider. They apply advanced track­ing tech­nol­ogy to mon­i­tor your credit files and pro­vide you with a num­ber of impor­tant soft­ware enhance­ments that help keep the per­sonal infor­ma­tion in your com­puter secure. Com­bined with an excel­lent rep­u­ta­tion and com­pet­i­tive pric­ing when using the Iden­tity Guard dis­count, you should be sure to look over our Iden­tity Guard review before choos­ing a provider.

Credit Mon­i­tor­ing Services

Some­times iden­tity theft pro­tec­tion ser­vices are con­fused with credit mon­i­tor­ing ser­vices. Indeed they share a lot of com­mon­al­i­ties. Credit mon­i­tor­ing is almost always included in all iden­tity theft pro­tec­tion plans. Some com­pa­nies like, Exper­ian and Credit Report spe­cial­ize in only credit mon­i­tor­ing. Usu­ally credit mon­i­tor­ing does not include all of the addi­tional ben­e­fits that some iden­tity theft pro­tec­tion ser­vices may include. Things like iden­tity recov­ery insur­ance and mon­i­tor­ing data­bases for your per­sonal infor­ma­tion. Still many find credit mon­i­tor­ing to pro­vide exactly what they need. So it is up to you to inves­ti­gate credit mon­i­tor­ing com­pa­nies to check and see if they offer what you need.

Pro­tect Your Iden­tity Now

The most impor­tant thing for you to do is to take action now. Start fol­low­ing the DIY ID theft tips above right away. We also rec­om­mend that you sign up for pro­fes­sional iden­tity theft pro­tec­tion today before it is too late. To help you decide which ser­vice is best for you, please ref­er­ence our Iden­tity Theft Pro­tec­tion Reviews.