10 Ways to Protect Your Identity

Identity theft continues to be big business in the United States and protecting your identity is becoming big business as well with many companies offering “identity theft protection services” to consumers who are worried about the very real possibility. You can take significant steps to protect your own identity though, if you don’t want to use or pay for a service to do for you and these ten tips are a great start to staying safe.

1. Check your own credit: You get a free credit check once per year according to Federal regulations. Paying a small fee will allow you to check your credit for suspicious activity every so often which will be significantly less than paying for an identity theft protection service.

2. Fix your mailbox: If you have a traditional mailbox, you should consider fixing it or buying one that comes with a slot for the mail carrier to put mail in and a lock on the door so that only you can receive mail. Send outgoing mail through your local post office.

3. Better yet, stop using your mailbox: Use a billpay service offered by your bank to pay your bills instead of sending a check. Many services offer e-billing so that you can receive your bill via e-mail instead of paper as well.

4. Don’t trash it – shred it: Invest in a good shredding machine and you’re your bills, paid or unpaid through it before you put them in a trashcan. Crosscut or confetti shredders are best.

5. Don’t give info on the phone: Scam artists will often make important phone calls to their victims claiming to be from some fireman’s or policemen’s auxiliary group or something similar and ask you to make a donation with your credit card. If you feel motivated to give, ask them for their number and tell them you’ll think about calling back. 99% of the time they will either hang up or tell you they can’t receive calls. You hang up.

6. Watch your typing: One common way that many people find themselves scammed into having their identity stolen is by mistakenly typing in a wrong address for someplace sensitive like their bank. For example, trying to get to Chase bank www.chase.com and accidentally typing in www.chase.com. Without thinking about it or realizing it, you could find yourself at a website that looks very much like the website you wanted to go to, only when you put in your login information, the computer code on the server saves that username and password and sends it to an identity thief who will be sure to try it out at the real site as quickly as possible.

7. Don’t click your e-mails: Similar to typing mistakes, hackers and identity thieves will often set up bogus websites that look like the real thing and then send out mass e-mails designed to look like they are coming from that bank or institution. The e-mail will tell you there’s some problem with your account and that you have to immediately come to their site to correct the issue or some disaster will befall you. Clicking on the link that is provided in the e-mail takes you to the bogus site where your login information is captured and you are well on your way to having your identity stolen. If you get any e-mail from a bank or credit union demanding that you visit their site, open your web browser yourself and type in the address manually (carefully), then log in and see if there is any truth to the e-mail you received.

8. Buy a firewall: A firewall is software (or possibly hardware) that specifically watches the Internet “traffic” going into and out of your computer. Any traffic that is not normal will be blocked. This is a good way to keep hackers from “seeing” your computer online and trying to hack their way into your system to steal valuable information.

9. Update your antivirus: Viruses on the Internet are a great way of retrieving information by planting a file on your computer that is designed to send information back to the person who created it. Solid antivirus protection will keep these nasty little bugs from getting installed on your system in the first place.

10. Change your passwords: At least once every six months – many sites that use passwords such as banks will make you change your password automatically once every 120 days or so but if they don’t, you should do it yourself. There are computers out there constantly trying to crack the codes of thousands of bank and other accounts and just because they don’t figure yours out today, they might the next time they get around to randomly trying your account.