check list to prevent identity theft online

Don't Be a Victim: A Checklist for Preventing Identity Theft
By Brian Grouzos

Imagine waking up one day to find that everything you work hard for is compromised.  Your finances, your home, your family, everything is at risk.  Someone has taken your identity and it may take years to recover.  Nobody is completely protected.  This nightmare is very real and you could be next.  The FTC estimates that over 9 million people are the victims of identity theft every year.  Are you taking the steps necessary to make sure that you don't become a statistic?  Use the following checklist and protect yourself from identity theft today!

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Separate your personal identity documents

Keeping all of your personal documents and credit cards in your wallet or purse while convenient makes life easy for criminals too.  Separate your personal identity documents and only keep the essentials on you.  Limit the number of credit cards you carry and leave your check book somewhere safe.  Most importantly, never keep your PIN with your credit and debit cards and never use something like your birthday.  It's right on your driver's license.

Shred all important documents

Anything with personally identifiable information is at risk.  This can include bank statements, credit card offers, medical claims, receipts, and benefits information.  Thieves often "dumpster dive" looking for this information.  Make sure it's in pieces when they find it.

Secure your mail box

An even better option for identity thieves is to steal your mail right from the source.  Make sure your mail box is secure, never leave mail overnight if possible, and if you're on vacation have someone collect your mail daily for you.

Watch for suspicious mail activity

Sometimes identity thieves will redirect your mail to another address to gain access to your important documents.  Be aware if your mail seems lighter than normal and important bills are missing.  Check with your post office if you suspect potential fraudulent activity with your mail.

Use secure mail boxes

When sending important information or sensitive documents, use secure mail boxes like the ones provided by the post office.  Never leave important mail out in the open for someone to walk by and steal.

Be alert to phishing emails

Never give out your usernames, passwords, account numbers, or other sensitive information through suspicious websites or emails.  Verify the URL, the information in the address bar at the top of the screen, to make sure that you are on the correct site.  Look for SSL encryption by verifying your browser security icon before providing sensitive information such as credit card numbers.  You can also check for third-party security verification such as VeriSign for confirmation that your information is secure.

Create strong passwords

Identity thieves love it when you make their life easy.  Never create passwords that are easy to break such as password, password1234, your name, or other easy to guess information.  Make your password as secure as possible by adding letters, numbers, special characters, and capital letters.  An easy to use method is making an acronym of your favorite phrase, song chorus, or other easy to remember piece of information.  Your password should look something like AnTr0@2! to make it impossible to guess and hard to crack.

Beware of social networking

Make sure you protect your social networking information.  Adjust your privacy settings appropriately to prevent unknown people from accessing your information.  Leave off anything that can be used to steal your identity such as full birthday, address, phone number, and even relationships with family members.  Be careful who you let access your network as well.  Many thieves pretend they are people you know to so be cautious if something seems off.

Monitor your statements

Keep a close-eye on bank statements, medical benefits, credit cards, and your credit report for unauthorized usage.  If you notice something suspicious tell the company immediately to confirm and take action.  Hesitation may mean a larger headache since most information doesn't post immediately.  Take action right away

Close unused accounts

Make sure to close unused credit and bank accounts to prevent someone from quickly charging up your limit without you knowing.  Monitor these accounts if you insist on keeping them open to make sure there is no suspicious activity as well.

Be cautious of promotional offers

Thieves often use promotional offers to secure personally identifiable information.  Make sure if you're giving your information to someone for any reason that you fully trust them and they are who they are representing.  If the offer sounds too good to be true, it just might be.

If you feel you have been the victim of identity theft, inform your local police department.  You will also need to contact any companies involved such as credit bureaus, banks, insurance companies, etc.  If necessary, file an identity theft complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.  Visit their website for more information about protecting your identity and the steps to take if you are a victim.

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regular credit report check as a way of preventing identity theft

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How To Prevent Identity Theft - Check Credit Reports Regularly
By Abhishek Agarwal

If you've ever made a major purchase like a home or automobile, you should know how important credit reports are to your life. Credit reports are used for much more than just checking your ability to pay a debt. Many service companies (apartments, auto insurance, cable TV, etc.) check your credit reports before they approve your application. Potential employers are likely to check your credit reports before they make the decision to hire you. Credit reports are the single most valuable tool for you to find out if you've become the victim of identity theft.

Your credit report score is a number ranging from 330 to 830, calculated based on a complex and high-protected algorithm. The higher your credit score, the better your credit. A good credit report score makes it more likely that your loan or credit application will be approved, and it makes it more likely that you'll get a favorable interest rate on money borrowed (whether through a loan or credit card). Three companies (Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax) are the major credit report bureaus that collect and maintain information on your borrowing and repayment history, and they provide reports to your potential creditors upon request. U.S. citizens can by law request one free credit report each year, and you can sign up for a fee to maintain more regular access to your credit reports at all three companies.

What Information Do Credit Reports Contain?

Credit reports contain very detailed information about you including your legal name and any aliases you may have used, current and past addresses, employment history, and date of birth. They also contain details on your credit status that includes:

-  Current and past payment status (for example, number of payments over 30, 60, 90 days) on individual loans and credit accounts
-  Total number of open and closed accounts, including the credit limit and account balance
-  Whether payments on our accounts are current or delinquent
-  Public record information like bankruptcy, local court records, liens, judgments, and child support records (This information that can stay in your record for up to 10 years.)
-  Specific credit inquires made when we applied for loans or credit accounts in the past (kept very current)
-  Detailed account history for each account (kept very current) indicating both on-time and overdue payments
-  Credit card debt limit, account balance, and payment history (for active, open, AND closed accounts)
-  Your credit score

What is Identity Theft?

Identity theft is a serious crime where someone else uses your personal information (name, social security number, home address, etc.) without your permission to commit fraud or other crimes. The federal government estimates that as many as 9 million American's identities are stolen each year. Identity thieves may use your credit report score and record to rent an apartment, obtain a credit card, open a telephone account, or get approval for a major loan (like a mortgage).

When the identity thief fails to pay for the goods or services he has obtained, default on payments will show up in your credit report. This not only lowers your credit report score, but the creditors will most likely come to you to pay off the debt. People don't usually know this is happening unless they spot an unauthorized charge on a credit card or see unknown credit inquiries and accounts on their credit report.

Some people are able to resolve identity theft problems fairly quickly, but others spend years and thousands of dollars trying to restore their good credit report.

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How Does Identity Theft Occur and What Can I do to Prevent It?

While there are a wide variety of ways thieves get your personal information and steal your identity, here are some of the most common methods:

1. Dumpster Diving - The identity thief goes through your garbage to find bills or other mail with your personal information. One way to prevent this is to shred any paper with your name, address, or any other personal information. Be very careful about what you throw out. Once it's in the garbage, it's an open book.

2. Skimming - Some technologically-savvy identify thieves can steal your credit card numbers while they are being processed at the store. This is particularly easy when you make online purchases. While you can't protect yourself from all of these attempts, you can use secure sites when entering credit card or bank information on the internet. Though it's probably not generally approved of, you can easily use false address and telephone numbers to discourage use of your private information.  Be sure and check your statements as soon as they come in for unauthorized orders are charges. And if you do much online banking or bill-paying, you can check your accounts regularly online for charges you didn't make. Be careful and cautious in using user IDs and passwords to make purchases or apply for credit on internet sites.

3. Phising - An identity thief may pose as a bank or credit card company and ask you to verify personal information. They may do this through an e-mail that looks as if it has come from a trusted business, through a spammed e-mail asking you to follow an innocent-looking link to their not-so-innocent website, or they may catch you off guard with pop-ups or instant messages requesting personal information. They may even use the telephone to get this information from you. NEVER give your personal information out to anyone you don't know. Before verifying private information with an online service, check to make sure that the company you deal with is really the company that sent the request.

4. Changing your Address - Identity thieves have been known to divert mail by submitting a change of address notice with the post office, thereby diverting your personal credit information to them. This is one area where maintaining and checking your personal information with companies on the internet may allow you to spot such fraudulent attempts.

5. Old-fashioned Theft - Hold on to your wallet, your purse, mail, pre-approved credit offers, checks, or tax information. Once an identity thief has possession of your belongings, they can easily imitate you and abuse your good credit report.

6. Pretexting - Another technique that is difficult for you to control is the practices of obtaining your personal information from the companies you deal with. The identity thief may pretend to be conducting research to get information the establishment would not otherwise divulge. Once he has your personal information, he may call your bank, pretending he's lost his checkbook or other important information like your investments. Pretexting is against the law, but you may be the last to know when it's happened.

The single most important thing you can do to keep your own identity safe is to be aware of all activity on your accounts and to make regular reviews of your credit reports. They will contain the information you need to know if someone else is meddling in your business and using your identity for their benefit. The sooner you know something's going on, the more quickly and effectively you'll be able to stop it and have your credit reports corrected. Allowing abuse of your credit report to gone on for months or even years can create a serious, costly, time-consuming effort to win back your good reputation.

What Should I Look for on my Credit Report for Evidence of Identity Theft?

Review your credit report carefully as soon as you receive it. Pay close attention to the report of inquiries about your credit. If you have specifically applied for a loan or opened a new account, you should find a credit inquiry from that company. But additional inquiries may indicate that someone else is making applications using your name and information. If you find such inquiries, immediately contact the inquiring creditor and the credit report agency.

Immediately notify the credit reporting agency if you find errors like a closed account that shows as open or a paid-off balance that appears to be outstanding. You may have to provide documentation to support corrections, and you may have to make the same contact several times to assure the correction is made. But be persistent. Your credit report is a direct reflection of your financial dealings. Creditors and credit report agencies are obligated to report correct information.

Check every credit statement you receive to verify that you know about and approve all charges it contains. Make sure it reflects recent payments, too. Contact the creditor quickly and follow-through to make sure your account information is accurate and up-to-date.

A little common sense and a lot of precaution will help you avoid identity theft and bad credit you didn't earn. Keep up with your accounts. Review credit reports regularly, and be sure to follow-up when they contain errors. You'll find the rewards of your effort in your credit report score!

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internet security and prevention of online identity theft

Can Internet Security Software Alone Prevent Identity Theft? - Change IP For Full Protection
By Andrew Virender

Identity theft is a very vicious and life altering crime. It is the fastest growing and biggest crime in America surpassing even drug trade. Identity theft intrusions can come from a variety of sources and places where you hang out on the internet. Even some of our favorite sites like Face Book and My Space are not scam proof and you can very easily lose your personal information on the internet in a variety of ways.

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The dangers of identity theft are accentuated with rapid growth of wireless communications such as the Wi-Fi. What once appeared to be a harmless and time efficient activity, browsing the net or checking your email in your favorite book store, library, coffee shop or in hotels while on travel has turned out to be extremely dangerous because you can very easily lose your personal information. There are countless identity thieves with wireless snifters around these places trying to get your credit card number, social security number, any identifying information and even the IP address of your computer.

However, due to extensive coverage in the media most people are now getting serious about preventing Identity Theft. Most, computers come with one of the many Internet Security Software available in the market place today. What started as software to protect computers from viruses has grown into very elaborate and complex suite of security features. These days top Internet security software come with features that stop viruses, spy ware and computer hacking attempts; set parental controls and even alert you of phishing attempts. They come with parental controls, advanced firewall options and even network monitoring for wireless networks. Some of them even have tools to clean up accumulated unwanted files and clutter and cookies from the internet, erase traces of personal information and surfing history. Some of the latest features introduced in top internet security software now include some form of Identity Theft Protection measures such as password protection and authentication of trusted sites.

Are these measures enough and fool proof? Certainly not. It is a long way from a total secure environment. There are two things that come in the way. Browser security and router security. It is important to keep your computer updated with latest updates and security patches of its operating system (mostly Windows) and browser (Internet explorer and others). Both of these concerns are being addressed better than in the past but still pose a great deal of vulnerability. Hackers have the ability to find vulnerabilities and can beat firewalls. So it is far from a secure system.

The second point of vulnerability is the router security in a networked computer. But it is also one of the most overlooked and perhaps the best methods of protecting your computer from intrusion and your self against identity theft on the internet.

It is the router which assigns an IP address to the computer linked to the net. IP address is a unique identifying numerical tag for each computer device linked to a network or the internet. It is this address that gets logged on and identified whenever you are connected to the internet. Your browsing history at your ISP (Internet Service Provider) can trace all your internet activity. You can use the router to change your IP and you can make the connection secure by built in encryption capabilities of the router.

However, topping all these security measures is the introduction of IP Changer software that rapidly change IP by using a number of proxy servers at many different locations. By routing your internet connection through these anonymous proxies, the sites you visit will get one of many IP addresses other than your own, thus hiding your real IP address from potential hackers and identity thieves. These software and anonymous proxies have become very efficient and send your data in encrypted form without noticeable drop in internet connection performance. Thus Rapid IP change with the help of the new IP changer software allow you anonymous surfing that in combination with data encryption and most advanced Internet Security Software suites provide the most comprehensive shield against Identity Theft as of now.

It is remarkable how a simple idea to Change IP and well established encryption technology can bring us a safer and more secure internet connectivity and protect us against Identity Theft more comprehensively than the best Internet Security software alone.

Having this empowering information on how to protect your self from devastating effects of Identity Theft on the internet please go to http://www.change-ip-proxy.com for more elaborate information how to rapidly [http://www.change-ip-proxy.com/]Change IP to surf anonymously and protect your identity. You can also try this IP changer software for free.

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