Identity theft is when a thief steals another person’s identity for the purpose of using it to obtain financial resources or to commit a crime under an assumed name. Credit card fraud is the most common type of identity theft.
How Identity Thieves Work
* Gleaning information from a person’s trash or stealing their mail.
* Gaining data from thrown away computers or files.
* Obtaining personal information from government websites, the internet or private company files.
* Stealing personal belongs such as wallets or handbags.
* Stealing information from a credit card by skimming it through a card reader.
* Obtaining information from a person’s personal computer through security weaknesses.
* Posing as an employee of a trusted organization and then asking for personal information.
* Skimming information from people’s personal pages on MySpace and Facebook.
Ways to Prevent Identity Theft
The prevention of identity theft can be simple if you follow some easy guidelines.
* Destroy bank account details, tax return information and credit card statements using a shredder before you throw them out.
* Don’t reply to email asking for passwords or financial information, even if its appears they are from legitimate organizations.
* When you give your credit card over to pay for products keep it in your sight at all times. This will make it harder for a would be identity theft to take your card and put it through a skimmer to retrieve your information.
* Never give out information over the phone, regardless who they say they are.
Doing these simple things are just the first steps in protecting your personal information. If you are concerned about identity theft there are identity theft protection companies available. Costing around $10 a month these companies will monitor your personal information and credit data to ensure that no one steals it.
If people are searching for ways to prevent identity theft then Matthew Knight has excellent articles for reading, such as identity theft lost social security card.
Tags: identity, prevention, theft
