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Protect Yourself
From Identity Theft
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by:
Jim Faller
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Identity theft
is becoming a bigger problem as more and more people are making
the internet a bigger part of their lives. People who are new to
the online medium often fall prey to ‘phishing’ or other internet
identity theft schemes. In many cases the ‘phishing party’ uses
your credit card to order goods for them selves, in other cases
they will apply for credit cards, set up bank accounts, and take
advantage of your good credit rating. Correcting these issues
involves a lot of time energy and stress, so here are ten tips to
help you from becoming a victim of identity theft.
Use a disposable email account. Keep your business or personal
email account just for business or personal communication. If you
are going to be making purchases online, joining newsgroups, or
subscribing to mailing lists and ezines use a disposable email
account. There are many online free accounts such as yahoo,
hotmail or grail, and most of them can interface with popular
email clients like outlook or outlook express. Use one of them for
all of your shopping transactions.
Disguise your online identity. If your real name in Mary Smith try
to avoid using email accounts with name like msmith@example.com
when dealing with people you don’t know and trust. If you were
born in 1972 don’t chose msmith1972@example.com as your email
account.
Use different level passwords. Use one password for your personal
information, use another for your business accounts and a third
for your disposable email accounts or mailing lists you sign up
for. Don’t use sequential passwords like password1 for personal
use password2 for business, and password 3 for disposable
accounts.
Use strong passwords. Don’t use your birthdates, year you were
married, or your children’s birthdates. Avoid choosing passwords
that consist entirely of letters or numbers. Also try to avoid
using passwords that are actual words. The best passwords are
mnemonic phrases like “my father ate three apples for breakfast”.
Take the first letter of each word and convert the number into
numbers and you end up with “mfa3a4b”.
Rotate your passwords. You should change your passwords every 6 to
12 months. If you suspect your passwords have been compromised
change them as a safety precaution.
Use only one credit card for all of your online purchases. If any
of your other credit cards have online transactions you know they
are fraudulent. If you see offline purchases for your online
credit card you also know they are fraudulent.
Use credit cards instead of debit cards. While many debit cards
now offer online purchase protection it’s easier to dispute
fraudulent charges than to recover debit card funds that have
already been spent.
When you make purchases online make sure your transactions are
secure. In the address bar you should see “https” and not “http”.
There should also be small lock icon in your browser. If this is
your first purchase from the company make sure the issuing company
is someone you have heard of like Verisign, or Thawte.
Check a company’s privacy policy. When you make your first
transaction make sure your check the privacy policy, look for
logos from consumer groups like Trust-E and the better business
bureau. Click the logos to make sure they are authentic.
Never open or fill out email requests for you to update you
account or credit card settings via email. These are ‘phishing’
scams people use to try and secure your personal information. Many
of them are growing increasingly sophisticated and go to great
lengths to look exactly like the companies website using their
exact logo. |
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