Keeping your identity safe
It’s become a major industry to steal people’s identities. By impersonating you, these thieves use it to obtain credit (destroying your credit in the meantime) and to empty your bank accounts. What can you do to stop them?
1. Buy a cross cut paper shredder and shred any personal information before putting it in the trash.
2. Check your credit reports once a year for free at annualcreditreport.com to see if anyone is using your identity.
3. If you do anything involving money on your computer, like doing your tax return or banking, you should have a virus and spyware checker, like ZoneAlarm, that looks for programs maliciously downloaded onto your computer. Also, your computer should have a firewall to keep thieves from contacting your computer.
4. Keep your financial information locked up. Some identity thieves are contractors, friends, and family members.
5. Do not give out any personal information by email, telephone, or on the internet unless you know for sure you know who is contacting you. Don’t trust anything just because it looks or sounds like it is from someone you do business with — anything can be forged, so challenge everything.
6. Passwords should be memorized or kept in a safe place. Don’t put them near your computer or make them easy to guess.
