How to Prevent Identity Theft

Identity theft is quickly becoming a massive problem not only here in the United States, but all over the world. There have been cases documented with children as young as 7 years old having fallen prey to this particularly nasty cyber crime.

Although many of us enjoy and benefit from the amazing advances that internet and online technology has delivered, there are some downsides. It would seem that we all need to rapidly advance to geek status to have any chance of properly securing our home computers in an attempt to keep the hackers and fraudsters at bay.

Most of us just want to turn on our PCs and laptops and send some emails or do some online surfing without having to worry about anti-virus protection, firewalls, hacking and phishing? It may be fantastic to sit in the garden and do some work on our laptops, but do we really know if we have adequate protection to do so safely?

Many large companies have unwittingly lost customers personal details from their databases, including credit card details, home addresses etc. With the resources they have at their disposal it gives little hope to the ordinary everyday computer user of protecting their identity and data.

With this in mind I have put together a short list which should help everyone whatever their level of knowledge, protect themselves against identity theft.

Be aware and alert to the signs

You are denied a loan application for no known reason.
Applied for a credit card and been refused.
You are Not receiving mail you Should be getting
You get lots of call from telemarketers.
You get something by mail about an apartment you are supposed to have rented or?
Receive speeding tickets to your home address, when you were not the alleged offender.
If in any doubt it is a good idea to check your credit report.

Prevention

Install a reputable anti-virus program on your home computers with built in spyware scanner capability or purchase a dedicated spyware scanner.
Do not rely on the inbuilt firewall that comes with Windows, install a reputable firewall.
Clear your internet cache of cookies regularly, especially after using your credit card online
Do not open email/attachments from people or companies you don't know.
Refrain from installing free software or any software for that matter without scanning it first with your anti-virus program.
Do not download music or movies from P2P or sharing sites.
Once a month do a free online scan of your home PCs with a reputable company like F-Secure to check that your own internet security has not been breached.
Check your bank statements and accounts carefully every month and your credit report on a regular basis.
Do not throw mail or any type of document that may contain personal data in the dumpster, use a cross-cut shredder before disposing of them.
If requested by phone or email to give private and confidential information, refuse to do so until you have checked that this request is valid by contacting the company in person for verification.
Only provide confidential data in a secure environment.
Now the list may not have been as short as you were hoping for but it should go a long way in preventing you or your family from being a victim of identity theft.