Safeguarding your Identity: What you can do to Protect Yourself

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It is unclear just how big the problem of identity theft is for the typical American, although studies by the financial industry an the government show that the crime strikes million of us consumers. According to a 2007 study but the Federal Trade commission over 19 million were victimized by identity theft in 2006.

Only about half of the people who are victimized by id theft can say how it happed, such as by having their wallet stolen. The rest of the identity theft cases could be caused bu thieves stealing electronic data or it could be from thieves stealing information from the trash. What is clear is that, with the growing threat of identify theft, consumers need to be alert and proactive protect themselves or at least lover the odds of being victimized. There are a number of steps that consumers can take.

General Tips for Protecting yourself from Identity Theft:

To avoid identity theft via dumpster diving, shred important financial information before placing it in the trash or recycling bin. Using a cross cut shredder prevents thieves from piecing together your information. Shred such information as credit card receipts, credit card offers, bank statements, paycheck stubs, tax information, or anything that may carry tour social security numbers.

Another simple tip is that instead of carrying your social security card around, photocopy it and store the original in a safe place and then cut out the last four numbers on the copied card - or better yet, memorize it and don't carry it around at all. That way if your wallet gets stolen, your Social Security number won't be compromised.

There are a number of ways to protect against mailbox theft, experts say. The simplest way is to have a locking mailbox. Don't leave incoming mail in a mailbox for too long and don't leave any outgoing main in your won mailbox. The best thing to do is to deposit your mail in an official blue postal mailbox or take it to the post office.

Also, stop mail delivery if you are going to be away (or at least have a neighbor collect it) and remember that a red flag on your mailbox also alerts thieves that it is ripe for the picking. Watch for monthly credit card and other financial type statements and have other important documents and items such as blank checks sent to your bank for personal pickup. When writing checks, always use a heavy, dark ink and be sure to fill out ALL of the areas such as payee, amount, date, etc which will make it increasingly difficult for a thief to manipulate the check.

Account Monitoring

In addition to being protective of information, people can also safeguard their identities by closely monitoring their accounts for any illegal activity. The best bet here is to look over your monthly statements but consumers can also go online to look at recent activity. Also, minimize your use of credit cards and use a specific card for certain functions, such as business related travel. Finally, it makes good sense to protect important documents such as passports, birth certificates, and social security cards by placing them in a safe or safety deposit box.

Computer Security

To defend against phishing scams, use caution when opening email from an address you don't recognize and never respond to a request from a company asking to verify your account information via email. The best advice is not to open any phishing email that they may have computer viruses associated with them. If you open them, you may subject your self to possible infection that enables thieves to garnish more information off of your computer.

Also, make sure your virus checker and firewalls are up to date. Set the virus checker to an auto update mode so that you don't have to worry about staying current. In addition to automatic virus checking, load an anti-spyware program on your computer but make sure that it comes from a legitimate company. There are some firms that are placing spyware on your computer and then selling you software to remover the spyware.

In addition, make sure you password protect portable information devices such as laptop, palm pilots, Blackberry's, and cell phones. The information you store on such devices could provide thieves with all that they need to steal your identity.

When it comes to PIN's and password, don't use the obvious - such as your birth month and year, your telephone number or the last four digits of your social security number. Also never carry PIN's or passwords in your wallet or purse, or post then near your computer monitor.

Another item to consider is to be very stingy with handing out your email address. What we can do as consumers is to be very protective of your email address as you would be with any other information about yourself. Once you give out your email address to entere a sweepstake or free offer, it gets into circulation immediately. A suggestion is to create a second disposable email address-such as an account from a free email service-for sweepstakes entries or other offers. This way you can save your master email account for business or for a way to communicate with friends or family. Additionally, email address can also be harvested from chat rooms simply by adding an "@" at the end of a chat room handle. Even you email address on a blog can be found on the Web by bots searching for the "@" symbol.

In addition to the above steps, businesses need to be more aggressive in protecting the identities of its consumers. The problem is that while consumers have control of the information they possess but they don't have control of how information is controlled at their place of employment or b their credit card companies. Consumers can only do so much and they need to do everything they can.

Despite the efforts of companies to protect consumers information by documenting shredding and data encryption, recent news stories disclosing potential breaches at corporation such as Citi-Financial, Bank of America and Time Warner have illustrated that there is still a lot of work to be done. Government agencies such as the FTC are becoming more aggressive with business to protect consumers through education and enforcement of consumer protection laws. The only way to fight identity theft is to make sure that the government is addressing it from a number of directions and that it is not just up to the consumer.