By: Tony Francis
Submitted: 2010-02-21 07:10:37 | Word Count: 518
A recent study shows that seven out of every ten Americans become a victim of identity theft every year. To put things into better perspective, if you were in a room with ten of your friends, the chances are only three of you never experienced this crime.
Identity theft can be defined as a crime in which a person obtains another person’s personal data (usually without his or her consent) and uses it for financial gain. The difficulty with this is that the victim usually suffers financial losses while also dampening his credibility in terms of accounts.
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There should be no reason to fear this crime so long as you keep proper precautionary measures when using vital information about yourself. Identity theft protection first starts with some basic precaution.
The first precaution should be to always keep vital information about yourself in a safe place and never bring them out unless you need them for something. Vital information can be your social security number, your medical insurance or even your credit card numbers.
A second precaution would be when disposing anything that holds important information about you, make sure that they are disposed properly without possible chance of recovery. One type of identity theft called phishing scours even your trash bin for information that they could use about you. Many of these materials such as old credit reports should be destroyed before being thrown away.
Third, always make sure that different bills are being sent to your mailing address on time. Phishers can also go through people’s mailboxes for information and not getting bills on time could signal that your mail could be getting stolen. Try and ask your local bank and credit companies for monthly credit reports and follow up ones that do not arrive on time so you can make sure that your accounts aren’t moving without you.
Fourth is to be careful when typing passwords or account numbers and passwords on the open. You can never know when someone might be looking over your shoulder waiting for you to punch in your access code or password. This process of identity theft is known as shoulders surfing where the person simply tries to look over your shoulder and obtain information that you are trying to punch in. with the dawn of camera phones, shoulder surfing could never be easier.
Fifth and last would be to always do routine follow ups to different credit reports and account checks. Identity theft can pose a big problem if it is left unnoticed for a long period of time. But like a common sickness, if you catch it soon enough, you can prevent it from becoming a disease. Always do routine checks and follow ups on all your accounts and you can offer yourself a more solid form of identity theft protection.
When using public computers or making any form of transaction that requires you to use any valuable piece of information about yourself, always think about these five tips in order to assure that whatever transaction that you will make will be yours and yours alone.
Author Resource:-
Identity theft protection can be increased through conducting credit checks. http://Free-Credit-Reports.com can offer free credit reports.
