Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the United States the U.S. Secret Service has estimated that consumers lost 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 employ a variety of methods to access your personal information.They may obtain information from businesses or other institutions to steal, by bribing an employee who has access to files, hacking in the records or information of the employees back. Once identity thieves your personal information, 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 be submitted as a change of address), a credit application is denied for no apparent reason, or debt collectors begin calling about merchandise or services you did 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 that 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 not fool proof, a lock icon on the status bar of the browser or the URL of a website that begins “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 if their credit card numbers were stolen. They monitor the Internet “chat rooms” where identity thieves illicitly selling and exchange of 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 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.
Tags: information security