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What You Can Do For Identity Theft Prevention

One of the biggest crimes in America right now is a crime that has no physical contact between the victim and the criminal – at least in most cases. Violent crime is a huge problem in some areas, but some of the biggest crimes are ones that are considered to be theft. Identity theft is a huge problem these days, and may people do not know what to do if it happens, or even better, how to go about identity theft prevention in the first place. If you do a few things in your daily life, you can save yourself some headache or even financial ruin in the future.

Identity theft prevention starts with what you do with your personal information. If you understand how easy it might be for someone to assume your identity, you may think twice about a few things that you do. Some people only need your birth date, maiden name, social security number, and perhaps your bank account information to take what is yours and get credit in your name. As you can see, it is not that hard, and that is why it happens more often than you may think. Protect that information the best that you can.

What can you do? Do not fill in your birth date and maiden name on social networking sites unless your profiles are private. Even then, you may want to leave that out or use a date near your birth date instead. If you are required to sign your name and social security number for something, leave off your social security number. If someone tells you that you must use it, ask them why. Tell them you refuse as you want to protect yourself and your family. If you have your social security number on a bill or loan, ask them to assign you a different number for reference and to leave your social security number off of any correspondence.

You should also go about identity theft prevention by shredding all of the documents and bills that you are going to throw away. Never assume you live in an area where no one is looking through your trash. It happens everywhere and you are not immune even in a very small town. A shredder is not expensive and a great investment in identity theft prevention. Blacking out numbers and just ripping things up is not enough. Get something that shreds very small and mix those shredding in with food garbage for added protection.

Remember to protect your identity online by following a few simple rules. You may come across an email or web site that asks for your passwords, user names, cell phone numbers, SS number, PIN and bank information and other items. Never fill these out. If you want a ring tone, pay for it through your cell service. A free ring tone is not worth someone cleaning out your accounts and ruining your credit. Look up information on phishing scams and how to protect yourself. If in doubt, skip anything that asks for personal information. That is one of the best lines of defense in online identity theft prevention.

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Tags: Crimes, Financial Ruin, Identity Theft, Theft Prevention

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 4th, 2009 at 8:50 am and is filed under Education, Family, Finance, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.