Preventing Identity Theft
One of the major goals of this website is that of preventing identity theft. Although our research has made us partial to the services that LifeLock identity theft protection provides, we really want to stress to our readers that this is key in helping our nation reduce the occurrences of it’s #1 crime. Although it won’t be easy, don’t overlook the part you can play in helping to prevent this crime.
The amount of time and money that is spent by victims of this crime in getting their lives back to normal is astronomical, not to mention the emotional stress and strain that is caused to individuals, couples and families. You don’t have to shop online or lose your wallet to become a victim. Majority of the articles we write are about incidents of the theft of hundreds, thousands and even millions of names, social security number and credit card numbers from businesses and unfortunately, that type of data theft is not under your control. If you have to give your social security number to your doctor, employer, university administration, car dealership, etc. you are at risk. We have seen theft take place with each and every of these type of businesses and are determined to help in preventing identity theft.
Look at some of the statistics taken from the official website of the Identity Theft Resource Center:
-656 major data breaches were reported through this source in 2008 (that is a little more than 50 per month) versus the 2007 total of 446. Keep in mind that each of these breaches involved anywhere from 10’s to 1000’s of people. That really adds up;
The Identity Theft Resource Center has broken down the number of breaches by category. As you will see, no stone has gone unturned. The 656 were broken down into:
240 Business
131 Educational
110 Government/Military
97 Health/Medical
78 Financial/Credit
These breaches were also broken down by method of data lost. The most cases were attributed to “insider theft”, however, computer hacking, transporting data from to or from an office and subcontractors are also included.
This entry was posted on Friday, January 16th, 2009 at 10:48 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.
January 16th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
I wish I had known more about how to prevent this before someone stole my social security number and charged over $1,000 in my name that I can’t pay. Now I have to fix the mess. I found out about LifeLock when I was trying to figure out how to prevent it from happening again.
January 16th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
That website is really helpful. There is a lot of info there. Thanks.
February 19th, 2009 at 11:28 am
I think that identity theft can be prevented too if you learn to watch your credit yourself. A lot of people don’t do that.
February 19th, 2009 at 11:30 am
Identity theft can not be completely prevented, these type of services may or may not help the problem.
March 5th, 2009 at 8:16 am
I decided to do it myself and someone made purchases in my name that I owe for. I recommend that everyone get protection!
March 19th, 2009 at 11:23 am
These might be able to prevent it from happening sometimes, but you really can’t prevent identity theft. Just be careful with your infomation and be informed on how to report becoming a victim and how to fight it.