1. Shred documents: This is a necessary step to take to protect you because identity thieves have a story to go "dumpster diving" or sort through scavenging for all documents containing personal information. Once they find the documents they are trying to bring together other aspects of the identity of a person using the Internet, including social media. Destroying documents containing personal information, you are yourself eliminating the risk of landing information in the hands of an identity thief.
2. Verify bank account and credit card statements carefully: If your credit card or bank account statements arrive each month, you should make sure to go through each transaction to verify that you were the one who completed the transaction. If you see something on your statement that you do not have it, then you should contact your bank or financial institution immediately to alert them of the fraudulent transaction.
3. Keep personal information private on social media: Identity thieves often use the Internet and social media to gather information on the identity of the victim. One way to protect yourself against this is to make sure that you set stricter privacy settings on your social media accounts - especially your Facebook account because it usually where most people after the most personal information, such as their hometown, date of birth and mobile phone number. Follow the instructions on this blog to check the settings on your Facebook account and protect your information.
4. Watch your credit: This is an important step to protect you because identity thieves often ruins the credit of their victim by opening new lines of credit to accumulate ridiculous amounts of debt. Even if you can get a free annual report from credit annualcreditreport.com, this service does not provide real-time alerts of changes to your credit reports, such as credit report monitoring services do. These services provide you credit reports made full day with scores and monitor the activity on your credit and alert you of any changes in the report. By monitoring your credit reports, you increase the chances that you will catch the flight before it goes too far and ruin your credit completely.
5. Sign up for a protection service against identity theft: To take the extra step to protect your identity, you can look in the signature a protection service against identity theft. These services will offer credit monitoring report described above, as well as giving you access to additional tools that protect your identity, such as analysis of the black market on the Internet that scans your personal information in the rooms and cat illegal websites to ensure that the information is not sold or traded to identity thieves. Protection against identity theft services can cost less than $ 20 per month, and some services even come with free trials so you can try the service before making a financial commitment. Verify the identity protection against theft compare chart to see which service will best suit your needs.
6. Know how to restore your identity if you are a victim of identity theft: The last step to protect your identity is what to do if you are a victim of crime. There are detailed steps that victims should take to restore their identity. The following blog post details of all the necessary tasks that must be completed to fully restore your identity.
Visit our Identity Theft Protection FAQ for more information on services, as well as the crime itself.