More Americans have been the victims of identity theft than you might imagine. In fact, identity theft has increased more than 600% since the year 2000; and in 2007 alone, 6% of adult Americans fell victim to this crime. The average identity theft victim will spend $3,000 (not including attorney fees) repairing their credit history. Good people with  previously-solid credit records have spent months cleaning up the mess caused by identity theft. The personal costs can also be devastating; identity theft can create unimaginable family stress when victims are turned down for mortgages, student loans, and even jobs.

1. Protect your social security number(SSN). It is a critical piece of personal information, do NOT print it on any form of personal identification. If the number is required on a check, write it on the back of the check rather than printing it on the front for everyone to see that handles your check.  Many financial employees do not look at the back of checks so if you must write it on the check the back is better than the front.

2. If you receive an email and you believe it is from a legitimate business (such as eBay or Paypal) and they have requested personal information, go to your account page on their website to provide it. Do not follow a link in the email or click on any images.  Always close the email and type the website address in manually. This is a form of identity theft called “phishing”.  Phishing attacks are increasingly common and attempt to trick you into visiting false websites to steal your personal information.

3.  When choosing a pen number never use obvious combinations like your birthday, address, or part of your social security number. It’s best to choose something at random that doesn’t bear any personal significance to you.  This will prevent thieves from guessing your pin number and accessing your account.

4.  Tax documents are a gold mine for hackers as they contain social security numbers, addresses, and financial information. Over 8 million Americans have their identity stolen each year and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reports that in 2007, the highest category of complaints was identity theft, attributing to 32% of total complaints received. Keep these in a secure place, store them electronically with password protection or shred old ones and eliminate the opportunity for theft.

5.  Put a lock on your mailbox!  Most all apartment complexes have locks on the mail boxes but not many residential homes do. This is especially dangerous if a thief has open access to your mail where they can have bills delivered to your address and intercept them before you receive them. Why leave it to chance that someone will not take your personal mail (possibly containing credit card offers) from right out in front of your house? This is increasingly easy if someone just waits a few days to see what time the postman comes, and what time you come home.

Remember, the Postal Service is the only delivery service that visits every address in the nation — 146 million homes and businesses. It has 37,000 retail locations and they constantly deliver confidential information to millions.  Thieves are aware of this and often target the mail to gather information.

6.  Place a security freeze on your credit report, or set it up with security alerts. This makes your personal information useless to a thief. When a lender or creditor tries to access your credit report, they will not be able to see it.

7.  Don’t leave or throw away your receipts at the purchase location.  Thieves comb the dumpsters of banks, mortgage companies, restaurants, stores and other businesses for receipts, credit slips and applications. Skimming devices are also used to take the encoded information on the magnetic strips and create new accounts.

8.  If you write checks to pay your credit cards, never write your credit card number on your payment check. This information is seen by any number of people who handle the check and can possibly get your credit card number, address, and SS number all from the check. You can’t eliminate opportunities for identity theft, but you can make it much harder for the thief.

9. Shred and destroy anything with personal information that can be used in identity theft, such as account numbers, social security numbers, pre-approved credit applications, cash advance checks, etc. Don’t just throw your mail in the trash.  Contact one of the three major credit-reporting agencies to report fraud. The agency will place a fraud alert on your credit report and notify the other two agencies

10. Follow these tips and take action!  Being smart, taking action and going on the offensive about protecting your credit and identity is the only thing that will help you.

One of the largest identity theft cases to date was from one smart criminal who took hundreds of people for millions of dollars.  This was not by chance but by a system he had which he repeatedly implemented because it worked and people did not follow the above advice.  He started by going into apartment buildings and digging through trash cans for discarded mail and credit card offers.

It worked so well that he eventually bought a truck and put his own trash cans in apartment buildings next to the mail box areas.  He drove around to the various apartments weekly and picked up his “trash” on a regular basis. He then had a system of assuming peoples identities, opening up acccounts and running up millions of dollars in charges.

Don’t let this happen to you! Follow the above tips and protect your identity, and your financial future today.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 at 3:15 am and is filed under Identity Theft. 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.