If you’re going to live a happy, full life and do the things on your life list, you need to be healthy, not necessarily wealthy, but wise. These days, it’s the sad truth that being wise entails protecting your identity.
Why is this more important than ever?
1) Often identity theft victims may never recover…making it worse than many health conditions!
2) BUT it’s hard to control the fate of your identity, with all the data breaches (loss or theft of data) happening in stores, banks, and other places that have your information.
3) The “people” search engines reveal an astonishing amount of personal information about people that make the job of an identity thief even easier.
Then, yesterday two news items made me want to remind everyone how important it is to take precautions to reduce your risk of identity theft as well as monitoring the status of your credit and public records. (I’ve already been a victim of identity theft and realize it could happen again, sadly.)
Gangs are starting to use identity theft to make money—and having gang members get jobs at companies with the sole purpose of stealing people’s information.
On August 26, 2008, the Washington Post revealed that according to a report by Identity Theft Resource Center of San Diego, more data breaches have been reported this year than in all of 2007. The report sites over 22 million data breaches (loss or theft of data) with consumer records so far this year, from 449 U.S. businesses, government agencies and universities.
Easy Ways to Protect Your Identity
(I’d like to caveat that this post has links to several affiliate partners. I’m not recommending them solely to earn a few cents for SuperViva but because I know and trust their products for identity protection!)
What can you do? A few minimal steps can help:
- Learn all about identity theft at the Identity Theft Resource Center and the Privacy Rights website
- Shred documents and mail, such as credit card offers and mailing labels. Or put junkmail in a pan with water and let it turn into mush. (OK it’s fun too.)
- Hide personal info on social networks. Keep your birthdate, pets names, siblings etc. turned off in visibility. You can use fake birthdays when signing up on sites requiring them. Think first if you really want search engines to be able to “find” your profile or if it’s OK to only have members of the network see your info.
- Vary the passwords you use on websites. Be smart. Don’t use a simple word. Add punctuation and numbers. Make sure your online security software is up to date.
A couple of years ago I talked about identity theft on the news!
Ways to Monitor Your Identity
Order free credit reports
Only use https://www.annualcreditreport.com (not from other sites that have similar names). Order one report each 4 months, to see what’s happening year long at no cost to you.
Use an on-going public records and credit monitoring service
In addition to being aware about changes to your credit report, it’s important to monitor your public records, as they will reflect if someone is “living” as you.
I personally know and trust the people who run these two companies, with the ad links shown below. While the thought of having to PAY to protect your identity is nauseating, unlike some insurance, it does provide some peace of mind.
1 Free Month of EXTRA CAUTION: 3 Credit Reports, 3 Scores, and 3-Bureau Monitoring!
You can also do a background check on yourself, using an online service. (It’s terribly easy to do that too.)
Share this post with your friends to help them protect their identity too!
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