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Name, Rank and Social Security Number
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| Monday, January 5, 2009 |
Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the United States Secret Service has estimated that U.S. consumers are losing the country $ 745 million to identity theft each year. According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, the average victim spends an average of 607 hours and $ 1,000 just to clear their credit files.
Identity thieves use a variety of methods to access your personal information. May they obtain information from companies or other institutions of stealing, corruption of an employee who has access to files, piracy in the records or information of the employees back. Once identity thieves your personal information, in May they use it to commit fraud or theft of your name.
How can you tell if you are a victim of identity theft? Some signs are unexplained charges or withdrawals from your financial accounts, bills or other mail stop arriving (the thief May submitted a change of address), a credit application is denied for no apparent reason, or debt collectors begin calling about merchandise or services you can not buy.
Your computer can be a gold mine of personal information to an identity thief. To protect yourself and your computer against identity theft consider:
• Update virus protection software frequently. Consider setting your virus protection software to update automatically. The Windows XP operating system can be configured to automatically check and download patches to your computer.
• Do not open files sent by strangers, by clicking on hyperlinks or download programs from people or companies you do not know.
• Use a firewall, especially if you use a high-speed Internet connection such as cable or DSL, which leaves your computer connected to the Internet 24 hours a day.
• Provide your personal or financial information through a secure website of the organization only. Although it is not fool proof, a lock icon on the status bar of the browser or the URL of a website that begins with "https:" (the "s" means secure), may provide additional security.
• Do not store your information on your laptop, unless absolutely necessary.
• Remove all personal information stored on a computer before destroying them. To delete "utility program to overwrite the entire hard drive is recommended.
• Check with an anti-fraud, such as education organization CardCops (www.cardcops.com). Card Cops runs a Web site designed to help consumers determine whether their credit card numbers were stolen in May. They monitor the Internet "chat rooms" where identity thieves and sell illicit trade in credit card numbers stolen. CardCops transforms information on the application of the law, but also allows consumers to access their database to see if the card numbers were stolen in May. In the first two months of operation, the site has registered more than 100,000 stolen credit cards.
As with any crime, you can not completely control whether you will become a victim, but you can take steps to reduce risk by remaining diligent and minimizing outside access to your personal information. |
posted by neptunus @ 6:03 PM
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