Do you realize how much your life would be impacted if someone were to steal your identity? Identity theft prevention is necessary to protect your financial and personal life. It can become worse than you could ever imagine if someone were to get a hold of your social security number and then apply for credit in your name or impersonate you. Identity thieves are able to get credit, rentals, mortgages and more, at your expense. Some have committed a crime while impersonating their victims! Unfortunately, some people do not realize that they have become a victim for years.

What are some ways to prevent identity theft?

Be careful of what you throw away and how. Destroy any important papers that could identify you (credit card statements, bills, receipts, etc). You can shred them and the best type of shredder to use is the one that “cross-cuts” the paper so that it can not be put back together if someone were to go through your garbage.

When mailing bill payment checks, take them to the post office to mail rather than putting them in your home mailbox. It is easy for a thief to look for the mailbox red flag and see that something is being sent out. Not too many people send letters anymore, so red flags means money to them. Not only can they easily alter the check payee and cash those checks, but your bills won’t be paid either.

Need to re-order checks for your bank account? Ask to have those delivered to your bank, rather than your house.

Be sure to check on any credit cards that were being mailed to you, but you do not receive within a reasonable amount of time. You can call your credit card company or bank to be sure that no one called them to change the mailing address recently. Try to get cards that offer a picture of you on them.

Ask your doctors office or financial institution to shred any information they have on file for you rather than “throwing it away”. Let them know that this is the best practice for them to use with all of their patients. We need to educate as many institutions as possible on identity theft prevention and the risk of identity theft from old documents and records that are not properly destroyed.

Never give your personal information out over the phone to someone calling you. Legitimate companies do not call you to ask you for this information. If you are not sure if it is someone you normally do business with, hang up and call them back at the number you normally reach them through.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 6:56 am and is filed under Articles Concerning Identity Theft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.